


sonatine # hyewon

by yvescult



Category: Kpop - Fandom, loona - Fandom
Genre: F/F, Grocery Store, Slice of Life, This Is STUPID, tw true love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-09
Updated: 2020-05-01
Packaged: 2021-03-06 21:08:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 38,033
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26105467
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yvescult/pseuds/yvescult
Summary: she looks so familiar but i don't know her name.
Relationships: 2jin, Hyewon - Relationship, chuuves
Comments: 3
Kudos: 14





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: Hi! i'm chiaki, and this book was orginally on wattpad but i wanted to transfer here because of what went on over there.
> 
> Warnings: This fic is long. Each chapter is at least 10K words and one is 34K. The hyewon doesn't really happen until for a very long time, with the focus more on Hyejoo as an individual than the pairing itself. This is in Hyejoo's POV and I write her like an annoying asshole. This story is largely slice-of-life. This is an in-progress chapter fic whose plots and events are constantly changing, so there are inconsistencies and nothing, nothing about it is finalized or perfect.
> 
> if any of these things don't appeal to you, please don't read this.
> 
> thanks, and happy reading!

Once in awhile I wish that I could see my life—and live my life, and even tell people about my life, as I'm doing right now—just like a Quentin Tarantino film. You know, backwards. Even the middle will do. It's confusing to watch unfold, yes, but at least you know what's coming before it roundhouse kicks you in the face.

I say "once in awhile" because sometimes those little surprises I get thrown are actually kind of delightful, like a birthday party or the presents dad would bring back from business trips. I also say "once in awhile" with as much bittersweetness as possible because we all very well know that there's no way to just jump into the future like that. Even reliving the past is something you just barely coast over.

...I mean, I could tell it all to you like that, backwards or middlewards or what have you. In media res. But I didn't get that luxury, and you won't either.

So, as life goes, let's start at the beginning. No, I'm not going to give you any unsavory details of my birth—we're not going that far back. But before we can start at the beginning, we do have to go back a little further, just for a second, enough so you understand the type of storyteller you're dealing with here. I need to start, in as much brevity as they deserve, with Kim Hyunjin, Jeon Heejin, Jo Haseul, and Wong KaHei, otherwise known as ViVi.

That's right: years before any of the events of this story take place, those four bastards already had a hand in tainting my life.

It's no secret: I hate Hyunjin and her friends-I really do. And it's no secret because I make sure everyone knows it as often and as vocally as possible. I've spent so much time trying to forget the stupid things they put me through that, what with the shoddy memory I have to begin with, I've ended up forgetting what little normal stuff I did as kid. Yeah, they're assholes, they're dicks, they're all sorts of insulting body parts-but I got to hand it to those douchebags, they really helped me find myself in my skin.

You see, when we were kids, all that bullshit they made everyone go through, all their crazy schemes and wacky adventures, they all made me realize several facts about myself—I hated doing a lot of things, and I was perfectly content doing nothing.

Everyone thinks I'm enormously boring. I know; I've heard the talk. And it's okay that they say those things, because everyone can go fuck themselves. I, for one, love my boring life. I love my boring nothing, where the most I have to look forward to every day is watching cartoons when I get home from school or feeding my cat or doing my goddamn laundry.

I know I sound like a huge loser here, and don't get me wrong; I don't just sit at home all day watching wallpaper grow or grass dry or however the goddamn saying goes. My friends and I go to the movies and my parents take me on vacation outside of Korea sometimes and I take the bus when there are film festivals in town. I do shit, but I just do normal boring shit that doesn't require any emotional strain or effort. Hell, what's so special about going out of my way to punch a hole in the ozone layer of my comfort zone and inviting in a bunch of unnecessary bullshit? With an empty fishbowl and some creative noises, eight-year-old me had all the adventures in the world sitting in my backyard pretending i was an astronaut.

So when Yerim says, "hey Hyejoo, wanna go explore an old abandoned building?", I say, "if you want to fall through some rickety floor boards and get gutted by a hobo, be my guest, but count me out." When Sooyoung wants to take us with her on vacation to the Amazon, I tell her the humidity is gross and they've got snakes the size of cars. Living in Korea is bad enough without all that extra stuff that could get us killed or in trouble.

I'm not scared. I'm not lame. It's just not worth it. I don't know how to have fun? Okay. Fine. I have enough of my own brand of fun right where I am, nice and boring, with my own imagination, goddammit.

What's great is that just as I began to outgrow my make-believe games as a kid, the most beautiful prospect of being a filmmaker walked into my life and graciously permitted me to continue residing in the comforts of my boring little world. Let me tell you, it's like playing pretend professionally. I actually realized how much I liked this shit because of Hyunjin and company, as if they don't invade my life enough as it is. It started in the fourth grade, with me wanting to one-up them and expose their idiocy by creating a TV show that was better than theirs via little to no effort on my part (like that was so hard; I'm surprised those guys can dress themselves in the morning). Being behind a video camera, I found, even if it was just using a wide-angle lens to film my neighbor's beagle in a funny hat, was beyond addicting. In the past seven years, I've went from dogs in news caps to, these days, trying to capture the complex psyche of a teenage girl who doesn't know if she truly exists (from my latest work; my best friend Sooyoung agreed to star in it, even though she thought the script was trash, but that just shows what she knows).

But the point is not that I love being an aspiring filmmaker, it's why I love being an aspiring filmmaker. Besides making movies being totally sweet in of itself, one of the best things about this stuff is that it saves me from both feeling like an antisocial loser devoid of a life and having to actually do anything. It enables me to have a "healthy and creative hobby" and play pretend without even playing. I get to enjoy the world and a plethora of life experiences I never do otherwise without lifting so much as a finger. I just sit back, think it up, and then watch it all happen.

Basically, let other people do the living for me.

That's really me in a nutshell, and I wasn't expecting that to change any time soon.

So. Now that we got all that out of the way, let's get this started. And I know just the perfect place to do it.

During spring break of my junior year at high school, I got my first job. That's right: first, I said. It's not that I never wanted to make money before that time; it's just, well, that I didn't really care. Dad thought I was still qualified to receive allowance for doing nothing short of everyday chores, so what kind of dumbass would I be to stop taking advantage of that? It's like I was getting paid twenty bucks every two weeks to be this guy's daughter, and, let's be honest, I really should have been earning more than that.

But before I get ahead of myself, let's backtrack a bit. I'll admit, though: how I came to be working part-time at Mr. Johnson's local grocer is background info so long and cliché it's almost boring. Normally I wouldn't even bother telling it, but the rest of the story just wouldn't be the same without it, so hear me out.

It starts with the fact that one of my best friends, Choi Yerim, needs to learn to prioritize with her brain. This wasn't news to me, mind you. I mean, Yerim's a big goofy dork and I love the girl...when she's not prattling on about people and how she wants to date them and how many she's gotten numbers from and especially when she whines about getting rejected. With her, it gets old so fast it could set world records. 

Anyway, so, long story short: Yerim is a stupid girl, but I already knew that. When we were playing Call of Duty 4 on Sooyoung's Xbox 360 the Monday before spring break junior year, however, Yerim managed to confirm that, well, times had not changed in the past seven years.

It had started innocently enough.

"So, I was thinking about asking Jiwoo to junior prom, guys," Yerim had said, and it was really random, too. We weren't even talking about anything before she said it, we'd been five minutes into a new round, and I think what we were talking about, like, ten minutes ago was something along the lines of which Girls Generation member we'd go gay for.

Sooyoung and I were silent after Yerim had spoken. It wasn't that we honestly cared, though, more that it wasn't important enough for me to interrupt tossing a grenade at Sooyoung's hiding spot behind a decrepit building as she shot at me with her AK-47. For the record, I ended up killing her.

"Why Jiwoo?" Sooyoung finally bothered to ask as she waited for her character to respawn.

"Because," Yerim started, her tongue sticking out the corner of her mouth as she half-concentrated on the game. "You know how pretty she is? Also someone maybe told me that her dad owns my favorite clothes store, you know what that means." 

I had been winning for the past ten minutes, but when Yerim started talking I accidentally pressed my right trigger, shot a rocket into a nearby wall, consequently killed myself, and allowed Sooyoung to take the lead. I would've flipped my shit at this point (brutalizing my friends at video games is very important to me) if I wasn't too fixated on what Yerim had just said to even say anything myself.

"Who told you that?" Sooyoung demanded, sounding faintly annoyed.

"Heejin!" Yerim answered, sounding way too cheerful and bubbly. "And you know it's legit with Heejin." 

Sooyoung scowled at that, but said nothing further. She would be mad. Girl's had a crush on Jiwoo since the sixth grade. The only reason she didn't care when Yerim mentioned asking her to prom in the first place is because Sooyoung is the greatest best friend in the entire world. It was only when Yerim introduced her ulterior motives that Sooyoung gave a shit. Let Yerim talk about the people she wanted to date when it came down to how she would benefit from it, but the minute you drag Jiwoo into this, Sooyoung suddenly has to control her inner Hulk. You couldn't really blame Yerim too much for being tactless about this particular girl, though, because I was the only one who Sooyoung had told about the crush.

Anyway, even with Yerim making an ass of herself, Sooyoung still valued her as her friend just a little more than choosing to start an argument, so she kept quiet. That left the blunt insults to me, but, then again, that had always been my self-appointed job.

"You are some kind of dumb shit, you know that?" I sighed, shaking my head. I picked up my controller from where I had dropped it in my internal bitchfit from earlier and started playing again. "Heejin makes stuff up all the time."

"Yeah, dude, and she's pretty tough, —Hey, aw, no!"

I had shot her while she was talking.

"Oh, you guys!" Yerim chortled—yes, chortled, like what we were saying was the silliest fucking thing in the world. "I love that you worry about me, but I'll be fine! In fact, I'm more than fine; I'm like the hottest thing at school right now. I turned Jungeun down last Thursday, did you know?"

No one wants to explicitly embarrass their best friend (that, and detailing here how much we ripped on her would take too long) so let's just say that this comment from Yerim spurned about ten minutes of Sooyoung and I bagging on her about how Jungeun turned her down. She could only blush and stubbornly persist something about how Jungeun was old news: "been there, done that".

Also, I killed Yerim and Sooyoung seven times, while they got me twice.

Eventually we got here:

"I'll show you guys. Watch, I'll make Jiwoo's fucking week and ask her tomorrow."

Our game finished ten seconds later (with me as the victor), and by the time eight o'clock Monday morning rolled around, I had forgotten we'd even had this conversation. The last thing I cared about right now was whether or not Yerim was going to get a date to a stupid dance. One, I already knew she wasn't going to pull this off; two, anything even remotely related to dances or girls or Yerim's problems makes the top five list of things I enjoy thinking about the least; and three, I had problems of my own.

So, that movie I mentioned earlier, the one I wrote and directed about the kid who was struggling with her place in reality, the one Sooyoung starred in and quite lovingly continues to remark to me as being "one whopper of a shitty idea"? Yeah, that was the last project I had worked on and that was over nine months ago. Nine. I'd never gone that long without making a movie, even a little one. It was weird and it was unpleasant. I'd also had a long-term goal (whose term was getting shorter and shorter) of applying to some top-notch film school next year with a kickass portfolio, so this hiatus really wasn't helping my cause.

I used to carry my video camera around with me in my backpack so I could capture anything I found interesting and then hopefully use it for something later, but I realized that this was an invitation for theft, which I honestly wouldn't have put past the assholes at this school. Then I started bringing a notebook everywhere specifically for jotting down ideas as they came to me, but for some reason, inspiration was taking its sweet fucking time. I spent every waking moment where my mind wasn't occupied with anything else thinking of something engaging to make a movie about, so I sure as hell had no time for Yerim and how clueless she was.

Eight o'clock shows up, though, and turns out Yerim did end up asking Jiwoo. I was at my locker while they were about ten rows away at hers, and I saw it all happen. Yerim cornered her, attempting to be suave while Jiwoo appeared hugely confused, like an unsuspecting rodent being circled by a hungry falcon. Her voice carried over to where I stood, and I distinctly heard her winner of an opening line: "Hey, you tired? Because you've been running through my mind all day."

Chuckling, I nonchalantly shut my locker and walked to first period.

I had hoped that, after the aforementioned rodent-falcon scene from this morning, we were done with this whole stupid fiasco and could move on with our lives. Unfortunately, while I sat idly and innocently trying to tug open a bag of baby carrots during lunch, I watched in grave irritation as Yerim stalked over from what-the-hell-ever direction, looking like someone pissed in her soda. I assumed the worst and attempted to run while I could.

She caught me before I was halfway out of my seat, though, and, sighing really loudly, I was forced to slide back into my chair and pray God would have mercy on me for the next twenty minutes of whining.

"You-!" was all she could say, which was fine. It was all I needed to hear to know exactly what was going on. Plus, the less of her bitching I had to hear, the better.

"Did she reject you, buddy?" I relented, glancing at her with half a smirk.

"You knew this was going to happen!"

"Calm down, tiger. I'm not psychic, just intuitive. What'd she say, exactly?"

She folded her arms, looking extra cross. "Oh, wouldn't you like to know..."

No, truthfully, I really wouldn't, but caring seemed to come with the whole "friendship" package, so I feigned some interest. Luckily, Sooyoung walked up right about here, so I didn't have to suffer alone.

"Did she get rejected?" she asked curiously, though I'm sure she knew right off the bat as well as I did. Yerim doesn't just stand around seething unless some unnecessarily-blown-out-of-proportion "disaster" occurs.

"See? Sooyoung's intuitive, too."

"Hey, Hyejoo, shut up," Yerim growled. "For your guys' information, I did not get rejected."

I balanced my elbow upon the lunch table and leaned my cheek against my open palm, watching Yerim in amusement. "Tell me, did she seem at all put off as you put the moves on her?"

Yerim was silent for a moment, looking-I kid you not-honestly confused. "She did. I even used these really kickass pick-up lines I got on the internet. I don't know why they didn't work..."

One could only wonder.

Unfortunately, she seemed to remember that she was pissed at me for whatever reason and got right back to it. "Yeah, and then she went on to say that she already had a person in mind to ask. Wonder who it could be, Hyejoo?"

I groaned loudly, hands instantly flying to grip my temples in frustration. It seemed like every consecutive thing Yerim said kept turning into the last thing I wanted to hear, but this one definitely took the cake.

"God, don't tell me she wants to ask me."

I felt lucky knowing that Yerim's eyes couldn't shoot lasers because I'd probably have died quite early into this conversation. She continued to seethe as violently as she could possibly muster instead, which seemed like an adequate response to what I had asked her, seeing as how I was beginning to feel the same way.

Sooyoung, once again being the most sickeningly sweetheart of a friend any one could ask for, appeared not to share our sentiments. On the contrary, she looked downright cheerful. "She's totally into you. Anyone would kill to be with her, so do us all a favor and take advantage of that."

I don't know whom she was referring to when she said "us all", but I know for a fact that this entire situation benefitted me in the very least. I did not want to go to this dance or any dances for that matter. They're expensive. They're a waste of time. The music sucks, and I can't dance anyway. The people I'd have to socialize with are the kids who actually like doing this crap (coincidentally the same group of kids I'd least like to be stuck in a high school gym with). And don't get me started on all the drama that comes out of the woodwork even after the night is over. The whole school being like, "oh are you guys going out? How CUTE," or, "you look so GREAT TOGETHER. Blah blah blah blah!" and I never get to hear the end of it.

I wish I could say I was overreacting, except this happened to me during freshman year (y'know, the same year where you make mistakes like this that you try to never repeat again in the following three years). What's even worse is that this is the same girl, which means my obvious option of turning her down really isn't an option at all. If Jiwoo's going to ask me to that godforsaken dance, I just...I can't say no. If stupid Kim Hyunjin can walk all over me when it comes to her get-rich-quick schemes, imagine how much harder a time I have when a cute girl's emotions are on the line. And, God, if I say yes, I'm going to have to go and it's going to suck. You'd think suffering through one evening wouldn't be so bad, but if she still wants to go out with me (as she made quite vocally apparent the first time around), I'm going to have one hell of a time getting out of it.

It's just going to be one never-ending nightmare after another. Just the thought was making me nauseous.

"Christ, are you kidding me?" I moaned.

Yerim suddenly slammed her fist on the table, making both Sooyoung and I jump. "You are not allowed to say no, you woman-stealing bastard! I did not bust my ass getting rejected by the girl who's going to get rejected by you! That is crap."

"What, you don't wanna go with her?" Sooyoung looked at me like I was crazy. "Jiwoo's hot, why not?"

"If she's so hot, why don't you ask her?" I demanded, aggravated.

"Dude, I would, but it sounds like she's pretty sold on your ass." Which was bullshit. Sooyoung's pretty confident about most things, but when it comes to Jiwoo, she's pathetically shy. She turns into a stuttering mass of stupid just being in the same room with the girl.

"You really don't want to? Why can't you just say no?"

"I'm a goddamn pushover when it comes to this shit, you know that."

"Just face it then" she declared, putting a hand on my shoulder, "She wants you."

Then Yerim, who, as of a minute ago, had been staring fixedly across the room, suddenly declared, "Hey, Yeojin is totally checking me out, you guys. You think she'll say yes if I ask her to prom after seventh period?"

Jesus, this kid moves fast.

"I thought you were mad at me," I said plainly, staring at her.

Yerim waved her hand dismissively. "Water under the bridge. I've got a good feeling about this one."

"Does this mean your pride isn't on the line anymore if I say no?"

"No-fucking-way, dude! Now we can double-date!"

After that, Sooyoung and Yerim (now hugely invested in me going to this stupid dance) began discussing places Yerim and I could take the dates we didn't even have yet for dinner the night of. I was then forced to sit, head in palm, and listen to these traitors plot my demise for another five minutes.

Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on whose side you're on), I reflectively remembered that I'd blown the last of my money on repairing my video camera, as well as a new movie-editing program for my computer and other miscellaneous equipment, last Saturday. It's not like I planned to be broke just in time for this crisis, but if I had known last week that some girl was going to ask me to prom in a few days, I would have splurged more.

I told my friends all of this, and I figured I had finally weaseled my way out of this horrible situation, even when Sooyoung retorted with, "dude, even Heejin who eats cold waffles for dinner every night' somehow managed to save up for a ticket." I didn't care how many cheap people were able to save enough money for this dance; that wasn't going to change how expensive it was going to be. Most importantly enough, it's not like I simply had no money in my wallet: I'd just spent four hundred dollars.

Best four hundred dollars I've ever spent, though, if I do say so myself, even if it did mean I had to get a two-month advance on my allowance and essentially offer my dad my soul for the next summer. The first thing I did with my new junk was splice together a bunch of old clips I had of us pushing Yerim off this little bridge over the creek by the pond (which, I might add, is how I broke the camera in the first place). I was amazed at how much footage I had stored of that, and it made a real knee-slapper of a three-minute montage. 

Yerim was not having any of my excuses, though, apparently. "You can get a job! Prom isn't for another month and a half."

"Yeah, about time you got one," Sooyoung added.

"I can hook you up!" Yerim continued excitedly.

"I'm not getting a job just so I can go to something I don't want to go to-"

That was when I thought about it, all of it: why I didn't want to go to this stupid dance, why I couldn't, why I didn't even want to be thinking about any of this in the first place. Then I thought about the prospect of having a job and why I had never had one. The joys of the almighty dollar aside, a job meant I would have to interact with a bunch of people I probably didn't like. I would have to take orders from some cranky old asshole and wake up early and stay late doing shit I didn't even know how to do and most likely didn't want to do. Talk about punching holes in comfort zones; this was starting to sound almost as unappealing as going to the dance in the first place. I was supposed to be working on my next movie, not dealing with all this crap.

That's when I got the most brilliant idea. It wasn't even so much that I got the idea as the idea itself swung a sack full of bricks in my face.

"...A job. That's it."

Sooyoung and Yerim exchanged glances at this, but I was too busy being deliriously excited to alleviate their confusion. In fact, that I suddenly sounded so excited was probably what made them confused in the first place. Few things excite me, and the way I physically expressed this foreign emotion was actually pretty awkward: a fraction higher of a pitch in my tone and (as I've been told) this creepy twinkle in my eye. Once in a blue moon I even smile in a way that isn't patronizing and sarcastic.

"Yerim, you said you'd get me one, right? You work at a grocery store?" I demanded, feeling anxious even as I spoke the words. When she slowly nodded, I cracked one of those weird genuinely pleased smiles. "Perfect..."

It seemed like the two had shared a telepathic rock-paper-scissors game in that look a second ago, to see who would be brave enough to ask me what the hell was going on, because Sooyoung had to nudge a nervously confused Yerim before the kid said anything. "So you'll take it then?"

"Yup."

"And you'll go with Jiwoo to the prom...?"

"Nope."

As I said this and watched my two friends take a minute to process what had just happened, the bell for sixth period rang, bringing with it a resounding scrapping of chairs, rattling of trays, and amplified chatter of teenagers all around the room. With that, I shot up from my seat, grabbing my tray of untouched food and tossing it (tray and all) in the trash, before I bolted out the cafeteria doors. I was on a mission and first things first: I didn't need anything (or anyone) distracting me.

About five minutes after I'd left the cafeteria, I found Jiwoo at her locker, supposedly changing out her books. I strolled in her direction, pretending as if I was going to pass her but making sure to put myself directly in her line of sight as I did.

Just as planned, she caught me walking behind her in the reflection of her mirror. I watched the look of surprised delight cross her face before she spun around, slamming her locker shut in the process and reaching out to tug on the sleeve of my jacket.

"Hyejoo! Can I ask you something?" She asked. I said nothing as I allowed her to guide me by my sleeve away from the middle of the hall, but silence was typical behavior of mine so she didn't appear to mind.

She released me when we got to her locker, tucking hair behind her ear. I also noted that she was a few inches shorter than me; if I was a normal girl I'd probably find this adorable, but unfortunately for her, I was still Hyejoo.

"I was talking to Yerim this morning about junior prom and it reminded me that, even though it's all the way at the end of May, it is coming up, and I don't want the person I actually want to go with to get asked before it's too late!"

Ouch. Sorry, Yerim.

"Okay."

"So...are you going?" She asked sweetly. I found it a bit obnoxious that she didn't just get to the point, but whatever. I played along so it didn't feel like I just came here with the intent of rejecting her.

"No."

This made her smile. "Well, do you want to?"

"...I'm pretty sure I just said I'm not going."

Then she giggled, for God's sake, and I was almost afraid my guilt would force me to change my mind. "No, I meant with me!"

Bingo.

I sighed, crossing my arms and leaning against the lockers. She could already sense that this was not going according to plan, and her face faltered. "Look," I started, glancing sideways at her. "It's nothing against you, honestly. I just don't want to go. I think dances are kind of lame."

Jiwoo was silent after that, and I made myself look away because, God help me, if her eyes showed so much as a hint of moisture, I was going to flip my shit. I quickly continued talking. "You know what, though, you really don't want to go with me."

"But..." I heard her say, and thankfully there wasn't a trace of a sob anywhere in there. "You're really cute and smart and..."

"Boring. You know who's really cute and smart and actually fun, though?" I risked making eye contact (no tears, though, thank God) and gave her a genuine grin. "Sooyoung. She can play piano and sing, too. And she doesn't have a date! And, best part, she was just telling me today that you have gorgeous eyes and a breathtaking smile and she thinks your laugh is cute." That last part was a lie: she didn't tell me that today, she told me that last week and the week before and every week before that, it felt like. Oh, and she told me it yesterday after Yerim went home after our video game. She'd probably tell me this again today anyway, so I guess it was only half a lie.

"Yeah?" She said, brightening noticeably.

"Yup. And I can guarantee you that if you ask her right now, she will most definitely not be an asshole and say no." I paused. "Also, if anyone asks, you turned me down." If I was doing Sooyoung a favor, I might as well do Yerim one too.

She smiled distantly. "Well, thanks, Hyejoo. I think I will ask her." She turned back to her locker, grabbed a book, and shut it. I shifted to let her pass as she began to move in my direction, but instead of walking by, she pulled her arm back and socked me in the arm.

I'm not going to lie, that actually hurt like hell. I pulled back in alarm, gripping the spot and rubbing at it tenderly while staring at her like she was batshit insane, which I wouldn't have been too surprised to discover.

"No offense, but I wasn't going to cry," she said before sauntering past me. "See you in history."

Long, long story short, I ended up explaining my whole plan to Yerim and Sooyoung on the bus after school. Since Jiwoo had managed to ask Sooyoung to prom at whatever time they had ran into each that day, she was happy enough not caring why I did anything. Even Yerim, who had used the same stupid pick-up line on Yeojin, somehow landed a date. So that, combined with the fact that she still had a buddy to double date with, meant she wasn't peeved in the slightest.

Yerim had to go to work after we reached the bus stop, and she promised to talk to her boss about me when she got there. Later that night, as I was half-doing my homework, half-practicing drawing old people on my homework paper, my younger sister kicked the door of my room open, toting Yerim on the house phone in her right hand. I think I caught her saying something like, "I've been yelling at you to get the phone for three minutes, you deaf idiot," as I shoved her out of my room, but it all sounds like gibberish coming out of that little gremlin. Yerim then kindly informed me that her boss wanted to meet me tomorrow after school.

Before I knew it, it was a week and a half later on Friday, April the ninth, the first day of spring break, and I was standing in the middle of Johnson's Grocer donning a macaroni-colored smock and a name-tag inviting people to approach me and ask what aisle had the pork rinds or RC cola. I had a dirty mop gripped in my right fist and a bout of optimism swelling in my chest as I surveyed the store before me: the rows of food-stocked shelves, the Campbell's soup can display, the flickering yellow lights above, the scuffed linoleum. Despite my pessimism toward the idea of a job, I had good feelings about this place.

For someone native to a small town I didn't know much about anyone, let alone Mr. Johnson. It was probably because I was such a big recluse, but who can tell, really. The extent of my knowledge of this man was that he lived two houses from where my elementary school's old cafeteria chef used to live and really liked to go jogging in the same blue tracksuit at four in the morning every day. But the store he ran on the corner at the end of Main Street was pretty legit; a cute, small grocery business that succeeded in keeping me from feeling like a sleezy tool. All I had to do was bag groceries for old ladies and mop up the same clean spot about five times a day, and I got paid $8.50 an hour, which seemed reasonable enough. All this extra cash would come in handy later down the line; I did need a new tripod, after all.

And the best part of all was how this factored into my new movie. I don't know why I never tried fishing for inspiration in an unfamiliar situation like getting a job, but, the potential this particular little godsend of a gig had in producing my next big hit was endless. A documentary, a mocumentary, a tragic romance, a apocalyptic horror, a slice-of-life comedy, a psychological action-thriller—I could already see it all from behind my cash register, the store coming to life through my imagination's eye in ways the milling customers had no idea they were a part of.

It was beautiful. Nothing was going to stand in my way now. Nothing was going to detract me from my vision. All I had to do was live and my muse would hit me before I knew it.

I just had no idea how hard.


	2. two

My parents apparently failed to let me know we were going on vacation for my spring break. Either that, or I forgot they told me, anyway. It might be safer to bet your money on the latter, considering, funnily enough, I forgot to tell them I had gotten a job. We all caught each other up to speed at dinner Friday, the night before we were meant to leave, when my dad, between mouthfuls of meatloaf, randomly bellowed, "so, you got your bags packed yet?" to which I was forced to reply in utter confusion, "...uh, bags?"

You'd think I'd have noticed all the suitcases around the house and the missing toiletry-type things from the bathroom this past week, but I honestly hadn't.

Thankfully, only my mom was annoyed to hear that I could not join family Hye on its road trip excursion to the exotic land of Wisconsin to visit relatives. She started bitching something about, "you haven't seen your Uncle in years; he misses you kids!" which I highly doubt, considering he can never remember my goddamn name whenever I do see him. The last time I bumped into the man was at our family reunion three years ago, and he kept calling me either Irene (which is my cousin's name) or Mina (which isn't anyone's name) and asking me about how softball was going, when I haven't played a sport since the fourth grade.

Dad, on the other hand, was too baffled by the fact that I had a job to care whether or not I was coming. He kept looking at me incredulously during dinner, like any second I would suddenly punch him on the arm and be like, "just fuckin' with ya, pop!" He also kept asking variations of, "a real job Hyejoo? You're not just making crap up so you can stay home and smoke crack with your friends or nothin'?" Once I finally managed to convince him that I did, in fact, have a job that had nothing to do with selling illegal substances to the other kids at school, he seemed relieved on several accounts. For one thing, supposedly I would learn something about responsibility and the value of a dollar or some stupid crap like that.

He also realized that if I had to stay home, then my sister Minju might as well stay home, too.

"What's the use in bringing the other girl along?" he reasoned. "She'll be bored out of her mind without her older sister around."

I'm not quite sure how he figured that, considering that when she and I aren't vocally and mercilessly tearing each other to shreds, we're ignoring the other's existence. Either way, the news of my newfound employment turned from being a detriment to their plans to a golden opportunity for my parents. Even mom stopped flipping everyone off long enough to see all the positives that dad excitedly prattled off about leaving not only one but both of their children at home.

My sister didn't appear to mind the arrangement either, since she was most likely just as ecstatic as I was at the prospect of sitting in a car with our parents for two days to visit the same people who gave us tooth paste and socks as birthday presents. When my mom confronted Minju about it, my sister responded, "I didn't even start packing," and flipped mom off while continuing to shovel corn in her mouth.

With my parents leaving both my sister and I behind, that meant two weeks of me stuck babysitting the child I'm convinced was actually dumped on our doorstep one night by a bridge troll as opposed to having come from the same uterus as I did.

(And yes, I said two weeks. My parents usually made us take the next week off from school when they took us to visit the relatives. I still haven't quite figured out which was the lesser of the two evils.)

Despite this horrifying fact, I remained relatively apathetic toward the situation. I continued the rest of the meal in silence and went to bed without giving it much of a thought. It may have been that I was growing accustom to the little cretin, or, perhaps, that she was growing up to be less of a pain in the ass, so much so, at least, that hanging out with her for a few weeks didn't sound too much like torture.

More likely, though, it was because the minute I went to bed I ended up forgetting this entire conversation ever happened. So when I staggered drowsily into the kitchen at six thirty the next morning, I was genuinely surprised to see my sister sitting at the dining table eating a bowl of Lucky Charms. It took me all the way from the doorway of the kitchen to turning around with the carton of orange juice from the fridge before I noticed her. In my bewilderment, I froze where I stood with the orange juice in my hand and a stupid look on my face. I also failed to note that I remained in front of the open refrigerator.

"What are you doing here," I slurred, my words coming out as more of a statement than a question in my half-asleep, half-stunned state.

"Jeez, were you dropped on your head?" she mumbled around another spoonful of rainbow diabetes. "And can you put on some goddamn pants on for chrissakes?"

The sound of her voice recalled images of a troll leaving a baby in a basket in front of our door one cold winter evening and then I remembered last night's conversation. It also reminded me that the fridge was cold on my bare legs so I got my brain working enough to move forward, shut it, and commence pouring myself a glass of orange juice.

"You're being more of a hag than usual," I commented offhandedly. "Which begs the question: what kind of wacked-up nine-year-old wakes up at six thirty on a Saturday morning?"

Turning to lean against the counter as I nursed my juice, I watched her shrug in response. She flipped me the bird and grabbed her cereal spoon with the same hand in one fluid motion. "I couldn't get back to sleep when mom and dad argued their way to the car earlier this morning. Funny you didn't hear it. You must sleep the same way you developed your personality: like a rock."

"That's a shame. Kind of like how the sound of your voice is making me too nauseous to eat anything."

"My bad. Your insults are about as stale as this cereal, by the way."

"Smartass."

"I can't tell, is it because you're boring or because you're unpleasant that you don't have a boyfriend?"

"Probably for the same reason you don't have any friends."

Honest to God, this is how the two of us converse when we're both around. We never physically hurt one another and we don't yell, unless of course we're actually mad. These tiffs of ours are almost ritualistic, just slipping out of the two of us reflexively without any emotion or drive for either party toward the other. It's our own special sibling language, you could say, and even though we're quite good at stabbing at each other's deepest insecurities when it comes to the insults, I secretly like doing this. It's like warm-up before I leave the house and have arguments with less worthy individuals. It's also how I bond with this kid, sadly enough. We wouldn't have any sort of relationship without it. I wouldn't admit this to Minju because that's just plain gay, but I think she secretly likes it too.

I downed my juice as she struggled to formulate a response to what I just said, and before she could finish snapping, "good thing you shut the fridge before you shriveled up and disappeared," I was already out of the room and trudging up the stairs. Fifteen minutes later, I sat under the shower-head for thirteen of those minutes and changed in the remaining two, I bounded back down, fully dressed and slightly more awake. This time I found my sister in the living room watching cartoons on the TV.

"I've got my phone, so call me if anything goes wrong," I called over my back, slinging my smock across my shoulders as I made my way out. "And if you get kidnapped, leave a note saying who did it so I can send the guy a fruit basket."

"Have fun at work! Don't forget how worthless an asset to society you really are!"

In about another fifteen minutes, I found myself sitting on the hood of Mr. Johnson's delivery pickup truck watching Yerim struggle to unlock the store's front door. My house, I learned after training the day before, was conveniently close enough to walk to the store from. I assume that's how Yerim got there, but I have no idea really since she was there when I showed up. She was already at work getting the door open when I walked up, too, so I could only imagine how long she'd been wrestling with the thing. Considering we'd been sitting here trying for two minutes, and God knows how long Yerim was here before that, it was obvious why she was becoming visibly frustrated.

"You know what this place reminds me of?" I said idly, attempting to harmlessly pass the time as Yerim grunted and cursed in the background. "What's Eating Gilbert Grape. You ever seen it, dude?"

"You made me watch it!" Yerim complained, fidgeting with the keys in the lock so violently I thought she was going to break it.

"It's a good movie," I muttered. "Do you need help?"

"I need you to shut up and stop relating everything to a goddamn movie for a second," she growled, now jiggling the lock so vehemently I could hear the bell above door tinkling from the inside.

Rolling my eyes at that comment, I hopped off the truck's hood, trudging over to Yerim and shoving her over forcibly with my right shoulder. I stole the key ring from her fingers and searched among the six or so keys in want of the right one. When I found it, I shoved it in the lock, turning it to the left and taking care to push it inward and upward as I did so. I listened as the sound of the lock clicked from the inside, then pushed easily against the door, watching it swing open as the bell above it jingled gratefully.

Yerim sent me a look that was a cross between, "I hate you, go play in traffic" and "thanks for making me look like an idiot," which I must admit was one of the looks of her's that I most often times got the pleasure of seeing. I shrugged at her before shoving her inside ahead of me.

As soon as we'd both cleared the threshold, Yerim disappeared off somewhere, leaving me to gaze in slight wonder at the inside of the store. I'd already had two hours of training here yesterday (training having consisted of a thirty-minute run-through of what I was expected to do followed by two hours of Mr. Johnson's various war stories), so I'd already got a good look at the place. All the same, even though it gave me this reaction initially, it still managed to impress me. It was just so quaint and charming.

I was optimistic walking home Friday night, glad to have eliminated the annoying task of going out and proactively scavenging for employment, let alone a place as chill as this. Maybe a grocery store wasn't one hundred percent the most creative place to find inspiration, but I figured it would do for now.

Standing there and scanning it before me, though, as my eyes glazed over and my brain wandered, I rediscovered why this place originally psyched me out.

By the canned food aisle, I envisioned my female protagonist, a skinny noirette in a classical dress, knocking down cans behind her as she attempted to evade a bizarre-looking serial killer. Down the baking aisle I watched as my main characters, two goofy college dropouts, discussed ways to smuggle drugs from Mexico in bags of flour. As I let my imagination guide me across the fronts of the aisles, I saw them packed with crowds of scared citizens, their shopping carts packed with food, all rushing to stock up for an impending nuclear war threat.

My brain never shut off to these visions. Don't get me wrong; I'm not some crazy person with freaky hallucinations that I believe are really there or anything. This is just how I saw everything as potential inspiration.

Yerim showed up at some point amid my spacing out, a mop in one hand and a yellow bucket with wheels at her feet. I wouldn't have noticed she was there at all if she hadn't knocked my hat off my head as she came up behind me. I snatched it midair and shoved it back on with a scowl.

Yerim already had something for me to do, as I soon found out. Apparently I was supposed to mop up the entire store as quickly as I could so that it was completely clean before most of the people that day would show up.

Under normal circumstances I would have responded by telling her exactly what she could go ahead and do with that mop, but here in the store Yerim was actually my superior. She had earned the spot of store manager underneath Mr. Johnson from having worked for him for so long (since last year) and from normally being the only one who worked here at all. Johnson had originally intended to have one employee and himself working the store, but Yerim somehow convinced him that I would be a good asset. When Johnson found out neither of us were in school right now, he decided to leave the store completely in our hands most of the time, meaning that Yerim was the only person above me and I was the only person below her.

Still, I couldn't help seeing her as just Yerim and therefore see her ordering me around as unnatural and downright wrong.

"You want me to mop...the whole store," I stated, gesturing widely at it.

She beamed as obnoxiously as her smiling usually is. "Yes I do. And please call me 'ma'am'."

Yerim, if you could not tell, quite enjoyed being able to tell me what to do when I couldn't do shit about it. Our typical relationship has her at the brunt of all of my abuse (which I can't help, it's just so easy) so this right here was some kind of sick form of payback.

"Can I just punch you and we'll call it all even?"

"Not while we're in here, unless you don't want a job," she declared brightly, wielding the upper hand.

I considered this.

"Okay. After work, I'm going to sock you. Remind me or I'll forget. Ma'am." I reached out and jerked the mop out of her hand, smirking as I watched her flinch with my movement. Kicking the bucket ahead of me, I walked off toward the first aisle, leaving Yerim looking hugely annoyed behind me.

I started mopping around 7:30 and in about an hour and a half, at nine AM, I had made it through about four of the twelve aisles in the store. There was really no excuse for this, keeping in mind how small the store is and consequently how short the aisles are. It was just that I managed to get distracted in every aisle I walked down. I don't know if it was because my task was hideously boring or everything was just so much more interesting, but I kept stopping to pick up objects and read their nutritional labels or go through ingredients lists and try pronouncing all the chemicals in everything.

I learned quite a bit.

I had no idea what Yerim was doing, since I hadn't seen her in that entire hour and a half. I hoped to god that she was at least being productive, because if I was supposed to be running around doing this while she was reading magazines at the register, that punch I was going to give her after work was going to aim to knock some teeth out. I heard the occasional scuffling and shifting around over on the other side of the store so I assumed something more than sitting on her ass was going on over there.

Since neither of us knew what the other was up to, I figured she wouldn't notice how useless I was being. My latest endeavor, then, was a result of me randomly remembering that grocery stores usually had cereal aisles. When that thought struck me, I immediately dragged my mop and bucket over there so fast I spilled half my dirty water near the frozen section. I then commenced spending a good twenty minutes picking up different boxes and entertaining myself with the games on the backs of most.

This time I couldn't help it. I fucking love cereal. I've loved it since I was a kid, and its aisle had always been my favorite aisle to run around in at the grocery store. You know why? It's because I've been doing the whole cut-out-the-codes-on-the-flaps thing and sending them in and getting stuff since I was old enough to handle scissors. That's how I got my first amateur video camera, with an emphasis on amateur. I remember the picture and description were on the back of a box of Cookie Crisp, and they made it look and sound so professional. When I got it in the mail, I discovered it was about the size of the palm of my hand and only recorded around five minutes of film, which meant you had to delete what you just recorded if you wanted to use it again. It was designed for six-year-olds, okay, but I hardly cared at the time. I still thought it was so cool.

I was highly absorbed in solving a maze on the back of a box of Frosted Flakes when I finally heard from Yerim again.

"I have to pee!" she suddenly sang from somewhere in the store, the sound of her voice drifting as if she were moving across the aisles to the backroom as she spoke.

"Congratulations," I responded, loud enough for her to hear.

A loud irritated sigh arose near the back. "No, I mean, watch the store while I'm gone!"

"Roger."

"That means you have to help customers if they walk in, Hyejoo. That involves talking to them and being nice, are you sure you can handle that?"

I had resumed mopping after she'd given me the initial order, but when she added that last part I jerked to a stop, revulsion coursing through my body. Talking to people, let alone talking to them kindly, also happened to be on that top five list of things I enjoyed doing the least. It's because I find most people to be either extremely annoying or extremely stupid, both of which make me extremely mad, and being subjected to those things and treating them with politeness is beyond my scope of comprehension.

I groaned, clearly not happy. "Just take your piss and hurry back already."

"Get me if you start to feel like bludgeoning anyone!" And she was gone.

I made a short prayer pleading that no one would walk in, and for the first few minutes I was pretty lucky. However, either Yerim wasn't really peeing or she had gotten distracted by something shiny on the way back, because she ended up taking a longer time than what made me feel comfortable. Or maybe it just felt like eternity. As time dragged on, I had a feeling my good fortune was wearing thin.

And I was right. As I had almost finished up actually mopping aisle ten, the tinkling of the door's bell alerted me to the presence of a customer. I was forced to turn my head, along with my attention, to the sound, where, to my utmost horror, I found that it was no ordinary customer, like a granny or some random person I didn't know. It was quite worse.

It was Jeon Heejin.

I grit my teeth, willing myself to turn and dart farther into the aisle before she could spot me, but I was too late. She had seen me the minute she walked in, face splitting into a grin in recognition.

"Oh, hey, Hyejoo!" That was Heejin for you: ever cheerful, even when I currently wore the dirtiest glare on my face. In her defense, I guess my "dirty glare" was just my normal face.

"Hello," I muttered reluctantly, keeping my response monosyllabic in hopes of killing any invitation for conversation that could possibly ensue.

Unfortunately, the girl completely misread my hello and ended up walking over. That was my mistake; I shouldn't have responded at all. As I watched her approach, I had to fight back the urge to say, "I'm sorry, I seem to have accidentally given you the impression that I actually wanted to talk to you." My second option was to walk away before she made it to me but the store was smaller and she was faster than my ability to think that plan up.

I noticed she had been glancing up and down every aisle she passed as she made her way over, and when she finally reached me, she asked, "dude, have you seen anybody who works here?" all while looking wildly over my shoulder as if I was hiding all the employees.

I sighed, throwing a look upward in what I hope was the kind of visible irritation that drove people away without saying a word. Here was the moment Yerim was talking about, that bitch, the part where I was actually supposed to help people. I just wondered why, of all people, it had to be this asshole.

I uncrossed my arms (I hadn't even realized I'd crossed them, that's how annoyed I was) and revealed the tag on my chest.

Heejin, catching my movement, looked at me and saw the tag right away. She peered closer to read it and lit up instantly. "Oh. You work here." She paused, comprehending. "You work here! Since when?"

"Since none of your business. Did you want something?"

Heejin was initially taken aback by my response, but she recovered quickly. "Right," she replied, grinding her teeth slightly. "No need to be a dick."

"Same to you."

"Why are you always trying to start something? I didn't even do anything to you! I was just trying to be nice!"

"If you really had wanted to be nice, you wouldn't have come over here and talked to me. Can I help you, then?"

"Whatever," she growled in defeat.

For some reason, out of her and the other three of her stupid friends, Heejin is the only one who tries too damn hard to be civil and genial to me, as if that's going to make me stop disliking her. Hyunjin at least has the common decency to hate me back and ignore me when we're in the same room so as to not invite reason for me to point out how huge of a pussy she is. Heejin, on the other hand, appears to be under the impression that she's some special snowflake in my snowstorm of hatred. The fact that she tries so hard is actually more detrimental to her cause than she would believe, if only because it's both irritating and stupid. If I were to rank her and her friends based on whom I hate the most, she'd be number one. 

She even asked me once why I hated her so much and that somehow made it even worse.

"Do you guys carry Wheatie Bran?" she continued, clinging to something that would not incite me to say anything cruel.

I stared.

"...it's a cereal."

Apparently I had not exhausted all of my luck just yet, since that was the aisle I was in. All I had to do was find what she was looking for, and I hoped we stocked it because I didn't want to be standing around looking for it for ten minute while this noisy asshole stood nearby the entire time. That could only open up more blessed opportunities for her to speak to me.

"They're for my great-uncle," Heejin suddenly went onto say, as if she were reading my mind. "He starts his day off grumpy if he doesn't eat these for breakfast and mom forgot to pick them up at the store, and..."

I let out the most frustrated noise I could possibly muster before stomping off down the aisle, not letting her finish whatever the hell she was prattling on about. The fact that she felt the need to include that last series of unnecessary information meant she was making a second attempt at civil conversation, and there was probably more where that came from.

God, this seemed like the type of tactic her mother would advise her to do in order to befriend me. I can just see the talk those two must have had now, with Heejin whining to her, "mom, this kid at school keeps being an asshat to me, what should I do?" and her response being, "Oh, my little munchkin," or whatever the fuck she calls her, "just keep being nice to her, eventually she'll see what a sweetheart you are!"

"...he's in town, y'know. A bunch of my family is. My mom is having them all over to for my aunt's—"

She was still talking.

"Heejin, it's quite admirable that you think I would care, but it's also really idiotic, so please stop."

Any trace of composure she'd possessed in the last few minutes quickly vanished with a glower that could have blown up a freeway. "Goddammit, Hyejoo! Stop being such a little shit!"

"Ughhh," I groaned, shoving past her to go look on the other side of the aisle. She continued to follow me.

"—and all your rude comments are completely uncalled for! It just makes you look like a stupid bully, and you're going to learn no one likes hanging out with total assholes!"

Heejin's voice was giving me a headache. I reached for her box of crap (which I had found while she had been talking) and handed it her her, hoping she'd go away now. "Leave."

She snatched the box out of my hand, glaring still, and stomped off toward the register while I watched her apathetically. To my utmost delight, Yerim had returned from the restroom at some point, meaning I didn't have to ring up Heejin's purchases. When Heejin disappeared around the corner of the shelf, I heard Yerim greet jer, followed by the ding of the register opening, Heejin complaining about my crappy service and some other shit, then the sweet sound of her slamming her way out of the store.

Satisfied, I turned to make my way back to my abandoned mop and bucket.

The weirdest thing happened, though.

When I faced the aisle again, I found myself...fascinated by the way it looked. I paused, rooted to the floor, my mind wandering and my eyes alight with intrigue. As with all my imaginative illusions, I began to see the aisle as if through a camera shot, one taken from the end and at an angle so that the aisle seemed to disappear the further away it stretched. In my mind's eye, a couple materialized in the middle of the aisle, holding hands, looking absolutely enamored with one another. The shot fades away then, though not completely. The walls of food and the shiny linoleum and the bright gaudy lights and even the clothes the couple are wearing fade away. Only the woman and the man remain, still smiling at one another, even as the setting they were once in becomes gradually replaced with a new one. Suddenly they're outside, in a big green field, rows of smiling individuals in white plastic chairs lined alongside the two to create a makeshift walkway down which they continue to glide, their hands still clasped. The woman is wearing a gown now, the man a tux, and as the sounds of a violin almost blur my perception of reality and imagination, I realize my protagonists are getting married.

What isn't weird is the fact that I pictured this; it happens all the time, remember? No, what's odd is what exactly I pictured. This fluffy romantic stuff was not my area of expertise. It was strange that my subconscious would summon it.

Before I thought too much about this, my daydream was shattered, like a rock being thrown through a glass window.

"Hyejoo!"

I shook my head, the illusion disappearing and my mind instantly forgetting about it. My first instinct was to ignore Yerim, but she'd actually moved from the register to place herself right in front of me, arms crossed over her chest and a disapproving frown on her face—and it wasn't exactly easy to just pretend that wasn't there.

"Hyejoo," she repeated, adopting a stern tone that sounded downright ridiculous coming out of her face. "Apparently your customer service skills are a major fail."

"Fail isn't a noun."

"Also, you suck at mopping," she continued, ignoring my comment, "so you're going to do the produce now."

"Do the produce?"

"You need to inspect them all for bruises and blemishes."

I shrugged. It didn't sound too horrendous. Maybe I was just glad to be doing something other than mopping. "Okay, fine."

"All of them. Individually."

"Okay" I mumbled, flipping her off and stalking off in favor of my new assignment.

"Call me ma'am!"

I didn't fully understand how much of a punishment inspecting the produce was apparently supposed to be, however, until about twenty minutes later when I found myself in the produce section staring at what must have been my fifteenth Red Delicious apple, examining it for imperfections. I had stared at so many already that they had all started to look the same and it was getting harder to find any problems with them. What was even worse was that, as I, in my ever growing disinterest, returned my current one to the pile, I realized I hadn't separated the ones I'd already done from the ones I hadn't.

I gave up on the apples very quickly after I chucked my last one to the ground and stomped on it.

I was by the bananas a while later, searching around for the bruised ones, when the bell above the door chimed. It had done that about three times in the past few minutes, and each time, like a reflex, my head would snap up to glance over at whoever had come in. The first time it was the old woman who always feeds the squirrels buying a loaf of bread; and the second time it was this group of loud junior high kids that ran around the store snickering obnoxiously at the stupidest shit and didn't buy anything. You can take a wild guess at which of these two I had the most fun being in the store with.

Anyway, so this third time, then, a woman walked in. She looked about the same age as my mom and was actually...quite good-looking. Y'know, for someone's mom, as I assumed she was. She certainly couldn't touch my mom in the looks department because, hell, my mother is really pretty. (and the apple doesn't fall far from the tree, so what can you expect). But she was up there. Definitely someone's mother. I could totally see her kid contently wanting to hug her. Her hair was a short bob and caramel colored.

The door opened one more time quickly behind her. It hadn't even closed, really; a hand had grabbed it about halfway before it connected with the frame, pushing it back open as a girl (as I soon discerned it to be) emerged from behind it. I deduced she was the daughter, but only because the extent of her basic facial structure that I could gather from my short-lived glance bore a striking resemblance to the woman. I would later suppose that perhaps her nose or ears might have been similar to her unknown father or something of that nature, I'm sure, but at the moment I paid her no further mind than noting how much she looked like her mom.

I did manage to catch a few more details before I lost interest, though. One was her hair; it was this blonde color and kinda messy towards the ends. The second thing I noticed was that she was so fidgety. Perhaps the confident stride of her mother had just put her own movements to shame, but she almost stumbled through the door, shuffled nervously about behind her, and had her hands all over herself, tugging at her oversized sweater.

She was weird, alright, and the pair of them together were even more abnormal. All the same, they were just some people, and I'd seen weirder in my own family. 

I watched the mother suddenly tear the list in half and hand one strip to her daughter. "Go grab the fruits, okay?" she said, handing her daughter a basket after she had taken the paper from her.

She initially looked fearful and opened her mouth as if to convince her mom that what she'd just said was a bad idea. She paused, however, shut her lips, and nodded furiously.

That was my cue to stop caring about them and realign my focus to my own wellbeing. That blonde girl was going to come over here, which would inevitably force me to potentially assist her in some way, and God forbid I actually do my job. Before she had even started making her way over, I had already spun around, speeding off in the opposite direction in order to hide before she could see me. I was in such a rush that my elbow collided with a mountain of pears, sending the one at the top bounding off into the next aisle.

Now I had an excuse to be running away.

As I crouched after the thing, I heard the awkward pattern of the kid's footsteps dragging along in the area I had just left. I then quickly made up my mind to head to the cereal aisle again to finish my Frosted Flakes maze and started heading in that direction.

I wanted to be close enough to see what was going on, but not too close so that. There wasn't a wall between the shelf I stood in front of and the other side, so I pushed aside a box of yellow cake mix and stuck my head in the vacant spot, eyes zeroing in on the girl.

From my vantage point, she was at a fraction of an angle to me so that I saw mostly her back and little of her face, but I could definitely determine enough. She was standing by my half-inspected pile of apples, the handles of her basket clutched in her right hand while she continued to grab at her sweater nervously with the left. I watched her grit her teeth or bite her lip, only to hear her simultaneously utter something. I supposed at this point that they were just some weird tick, or she was just thinking out-loud. 

Two things about her, however, managed to prevent me from completely losing interest and walking away. Both of these things also, oddly enough, instilled a yearning to approach this girl, as well as maintain my distance for reasons that had nothing to do with my perpetual irritation with everyone.

The first was that, before I got a chance to spin around and leave, I watched her vacant hand dart out and grab an apple. Then, instead of placing it into the basket hanging on her right arm, she shoved her hand deep into the pocket of her hoodie only to remove it a second later. This all happened in such a fast fluid motion that if I had blinked at the same time, I probably would have missed it taking place. 

The idea that this scrawny mousy blondie was actually doing what I thought she was doing was almost laughable, but there really was no way around it: unless our store baskets didn't suit her shopping preferences compared to her sweater pocket, she was stealing.

I briefly wondered if she and her mother were in on this shoplifting heist together; perhaps they were working two sides of the store and were planning to walk out with a bunch of our wares in their pockets. As much as this sounded like a really bitchin' plot point for a movie, I realized this was probably one of those few important moments where I was supposed to do something that would actually make some sort of a difference. I pulled my head out from between the cake mixes, striding quickly back to the produce section and feeling ready to tackle this girl if need be.

That's when the second thing I noticed about her caused me freeze in my footsteps, halting where I had originally left from in the first place.

In the time it had taken me to get over here, she had moved to the section with the cantaloupe. At this new angle, her front was to me, and I consequently noticed about a billion things about her all at once. Her shoes were untied. The sweater she was wearing was at least a size too big for her, making her look both skinnier and shorter than she already was. It also made it impossible to tell she was storing something in her pocket just by looking at it.

But her face...with its big eyes and button nose and furrowed concentrated brows and lips like she bit them all the time—that's what got me, like a swift punch to the gut.

I knew this girl. I knew I knew her, but...for the life of me, I couldn't remember why or how or when or, most importantly, who she was. I had never felt so frustrated with my shitty memory in my entire life because I swore to God that this girl was someone I knew, but I couldn't put my finger on anything more than that.

The normal reaction would have been to approach her so as to solve this dilemma together, but I remembered again that she had just stolen something, and I figured the reaction a thief would take to an approaching employee would probably consist of running away. I also remembered that I had come over here to catch her for the act in the first place, but I was now more overcome with the fact that this son-of-a-bitch looked so fucking familiar that I no longer cared about the apple anymore. It was like a never-ending paradox where I wanted to and yet couldn't start talking to this girl.

Since she hadn't seen me, I resolved to stay where I was with the full intention of observing her until I was satisfied.

Through my peripherals, I eyed her hovering over there by the cantaloupes, peering curiously over them. The amount of concentration her task demanded had managed to calm her down considerably. When she found one she liked, she picked it up and started squeezing it as cautiously as possible, as if handling a bomb.

When I decided that the corners of my eyes just weren't going to be enough, I forgot entirely about looking inconspicuous. I stared directly at her, watching carefully to see what would happen. I almost thought she was going to steal the cantaloupe, too.

The squeezing didn't last much longer; the fruit appeared to have passed that first test. The girl hesitated a moment before her next action, looking anxious and unsure. Shortly thereafter, unaware of my heavy gaze, she brought the fruit near to her face, gently eased her eyes shut, and inhaled slowly through her nostrils. I saw her shoulders heave broadly before gradually returning to their previous position and then rise once more as she inhaled a second time, this time more quickly. 

I drew my breath in sharply at the feeling, but unfortunately, as subtle as I'd been hoping to be, my inhaling was a little too loud, a little too labored than intended. She heard it about as well as I had, and her eyelids fluttered open in surprise. She glanced across the way beneath her lashes, as her head was still bent over her cantaloupe.

She saw my eyes on her, and I caught her glance in my own. It was a very long two seconds after that, in which her brain seemed to process what was going on while my own worked fairly hard to think of something non-threatening to do that wouldn't scare her. The color began to drain from her face.

"Non-threatening" and myself were things that aren't often found within ten miles of one another, I soon realized, so I had to do the best I could. I smiled at the girl, and, while it wasn't much, it was probably more tame than I believed I was capable of.

I... thought I had smiled, anyway. I only say this because seconds thereafter I was a bit surprised to see the look of absolute horror that managed to latch itself onto every corner of her face as a response to whatever I did. You'd think I'd killed a small animal in front of her, for Christ's sake. I even went so far as to absentmindedly brush my fingers against my lips to make sure I had in fact just smiled. Realizing 'yeah, so I did' only caused said stupid little grin to falter immensely.

Before I could swear I wasn't a registered sex offender or something, the blonde girl dropped her cantaloupe—or more like threw really, because she sure as hell wanted to get out of there as fast as possible-and skittered away.

I stood motionless in the wake of whatever in God's name just happened, peering with all the confusion in the world at the spot she had been standing in just a moment ago. I had started to scratch curiously at my head when, the girl appeared again at the end of the aisle. This time, however, she wasn't alone; her mother was with her, her basket of shit balanced on her left arm while her scared shitless child clung to her right, holding on as if for dear life. The blonde also appeared to be dragging her to the cash register, and probably would've bolted if they hadn't driven here together. I watched her give her daughter the keys and tell her to wait in the car, all calmly and gently, and she did just that. I found it weird that she didn't seem to give a rat's ass that her kid was having a spastic episode over there next to her, or even that Yerim didn't appear to notice this.

Yerim did, however, ring the woman up quickly, as she was the one working the register and could sense her urgency. She thanked her and, composed as ever, exited the store behind her daughter.

It took me a moment before I had composed myself and come to terms with what just took place. I was still horribly confused, but no longer immobile in my bafflement. With a deep sense of dissatisfaction, I realized that I had neither caught my culprit nor figured out who she was, and now she was getting away. I felt like a huge idiot until I remembered Yerim was here too. Surely she wasn't as braindead as I constantly liked to tell her she was.

I marched forward swiftly only to see her at the register now reading a magazine.

"Yerim," I said.

"Hm?"

Her passivity was alarming.

"What...just happened?"

Hearing the befuddlement in my voice moved her to lower her magazine and gaze up at me in concern. "What do you mean? I just rang someone up."

"No, I mean with that girl."

"What girl?"

I paused, feeling a sinking in my stomach. I hoped to God my brain hadn't just made up everything that transpired. "The girl that was just in here with her mom."

"There was a girl here?" The genuine perplexity on her face convinced me she wasn't fucking around.

"Were you sitting there reading that magazine this whole time?"

"Yeah, up until that lady was ready to check out. I didn't even notice when she came in. Did you catch her, by the way?" She grinned. "Talk about ho-o-ot. Almost as hot as your mom."

Under normal circumstances, this comment would have earned her a middle finger, but there wasn't time for that. Well, there wasn't time for the ass-kicking anyway. "Yeah, yeah, whatever. So you didn't see any girl our age?"

"No, I must have missed her." She cocked an eyebrow at me curiously. "Why? She steal something?"

This was a joke, I guess, but all the same, I wasn't sure what to say to it. I felt compelled not to tell Yerim the truth, though, in case I really imagined that girl or, at the least, that her theft had taken place.

"She just seemed really familiar. I was wondering if you knew her."

"What'd she look like?"

I struggled to remember, my memory already failing me. "She had blonde hair, a button nose, and brown eyes. She was pretty short too."

Yerim mulled over my description, licking the corner of her mouth and tapping her chin in concentration. "I don't know... That could be anyone. I've seen at least a few kids who look like that." She shrugged. "Sorry."

I was silent at first, frustrated. Spring break meant I couldn't just go to school tomorrow and find out whom she was. This was going to kill me. Plus, I was still torn about telling Yerim about the theft. I almost told her right then and there, realizing it almost hardly mattered since neither of us knew who the girl was anyway.

"This town is so small though," Yerim continued, "so she might come back here. Maybe you'll run into her again."

She had a point. I changed my mind again and resolved to keep my mouth shut about the crime. If this girl did come back, I decided I would just confront her then. Until that happened, I figured it wouldn't make a difference if I remained silent.

"Hey, so I forgot to mention it earlier when Heejin was here since you were being punished," Yerim said suddenly as I began to walk away. "She invited us to go with her, Kahai, and Haseul to Hyunjin's track and field meet next Saturday. You down? I think Sooyoung gets back from Hawaii that night so she probably can't go."

"Wait, what? Me, too?"

"Well, she told me to come and said I should bring anyone. But she specifically mentioned you. She was going to bring it up with you, but she told me you must have been storing a spare mop up your ass and asked me to relay the message instead."

God, Heejin, you weren't even here and you still managed to piss me off.

If anyone is keeping track now, I also hate sporting events. Almost as much as I hate Kim Hynjin being a jock. Still, this doesn't compare to my loathing of Heejin and her persistence.

Don't worry, though. I like things, too.

"What the hell is Hyunjin doing having a track meet, anyway? Aren't we supposed to be on vacation?"

"Yeah, well, it's their first meet, I guess. That's why Heejin wants us to go; she wants to support her, or something, I dunno."

I breathed angrily through my nose. "What is up with that kid? Why does she keep inviting me to do crap with her friends when she knows I can't stand them?"

"She said you were going to say that, and that 'Hyejoo needs to loosen up, that uptight little bitch.'" The last part was said as if she were reading it off a card, just so I would know they were Heejin's words and not her's.

That didn't stop me from narrowing my eyes at Yerim and tightening my fist.

"You don't have to go or anything. No need to get all mad."

Oh, I wasn't planning on going; she didn't have to worry about that. There was no way to respond to her without me wanting to hit the nearest living thing, though, and unfortunately it wasn't anywhere near closing time, so Yerim was not an option. Instead of doing that or even responding, I sighed for about the millionth time that day, and trudged off.

When I walked by the pile of apples a minute later, I noticed a vacant spot where I know for a fact I had placed an apple after it passed inspection. I picked up another one, inserted it into the spot, then went to go look for my mop and bucket.

When I walked through the door at around 8:15 I was greeted by the smell of burnt pizza. I found the box I remembered from the freezer laying on the counter near the stove; about three-fourths of the actual pie (looking black and crusty) sat in the middle of the table. I shook my head silently, opting to clean the mess later, and searched for my sister.

She was exactly where I'd left her: on the couch watching TV, except now she had a slice of pizza in her face.

"What's up, loser?" she said, not tearing her eyes away. "Have a good day?"

"I had a marvelous day," I muttered sarcastically. "Have you been sitting there since I left?"

"For your information, I went to my friend's house."

I glanced around, hands on my hips. "Well, I noticed the house is not on fire. Way to go."

She hesitated. "...the pizza didn't taste very good."

"Of course it didn't. Admit you're hopeless without me, and I'll make you pancakes."

To my amazement, she actually did say that, and rather eagerly, too. She was more desperate than I thought. It also probably helped that pancakes are the favorite meal of every person in this house.

Either way, in a short while we were both in the (now slightly cleaner) kitchen again. We each had a plate of pancakes in front of us (or, we did, anyway, before we'd both dove into them like a ravenous pack of hyenas).

As my sister stuffed her second-to-last pancake whole into her mouth, I found myself reflecting on everything that had happened to me today. The episode with that blonde girl was still bothering me, and I don't know what came over me, but I suddenly blurted out, "can I tell you about my day?"

It probably felt as awkward for her to hear as it felt for me to say something to her that wasn't insulting in any manner. She actually lifted her head from hovering over her plate to look at me, as if making sure that I hadn't gotten up while she'd been eating and was replaced with a robot. When she saw I was absolutely serious, she nodded cautiously.

I ended up telling her more than I intended to. I don't usually talk much (I have more things going on in my brain that tend to keep me very quiet), but I spilled everything, from my impression of the store, to having taken forever to mop the place, to running into Jeon "I never shut the hell up" Heejin. Maybe it's because I never really do anything, so I never have anything to tell anyone about, but tonight I actually felt glad my sister was around to hear all this.

I finally got to the part with the blonde girl.

"Do you think it's weird that I'm so fixated on her?"

"I'd normally say that it's kinda creepy," she admitted, gesturing with her fork as she said it. "But since she looks familiar, I guess that's normal. Which is saying something, considering it's you we're talking about."

I nodded, finding a strange sense of closure in my sister's honesty. I grabbed her empty plate and moved to take it to the sink. While I stood there washing the dishes (I figured I'd give Minju a break since she bothered to listen to me without calling me a pussy in any way), she suddenly said, "keep me posted, though! I'm kind of curious, too!" which might have been the first thing she's ever genuinely said that sounded delighted about anything that had to do with me. It was my turn to stare at her, swearing I'd see an android behind me when I did, but all I saw was her smile, which I'd forgotten was sort of cute for a troll princess.

"And that Heejin girl is annoying. I would've kicked her ass." I heard the scraping of her chair as she got up, and the padding of her feet against the floor as she left.

Suddenly the thought of us coming out of the same mother didn't seem so horrible.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ily!


	3. three

If there's anything about movies or television that I envy the most, it's the montages. A whole years-worth of activities can be over in a manner of a few minutes with a montage. All the important things are equally covered, no time is wasted, and before you know it, you've hit the real meat behind it all. There's no fucking around with montages; they get to point, like a goddamn boss. I'll admit I hate to actually watch them because they're usually set to some random and annoying motivational song ('80's movies are the worst offenders here), but if I could really do that in real life, zip past all the bullshit and get to the point without dicking around, well...I'd be happy.

Too bad so sad for me, though, since there's no on-switch for that in reality. So when I had to suffer through my work-adjusted Saturday morning routine (waking up at an ungodly hour in a drool-soaked pillow, punching my honking alarm clock off the stand, falling on it when I tripped out of bed, suffering through my little sister's voice, sleeping too long in the shower, having to deal with Yerim being Yerim), I didn't look particularly forward to the rest of the week.

Waking up and getting ready early in the morning has never been my favorite part of any new day. If I had it my way, I'd always get up by noon at the earliest (and by "get up" I mean "be consciously awake but still continue to lay in bed for another few hours"). But it's fine. It was painful, but uneventful, which was most important. My days would repeat themselves, I was sure, again and again and again until the week eventually flew by, like life's knockoff half-price version of a montage, and there was nothing to be done about that.

Except no. It wasn't like that at all.

Because (and this is very crucial) Saturday didn't just end after I'd woken up. No, Saturday actually transpired, with all the events within it taking place, and then Saturday went, leaving me like a sleazy whore I'd slept with at a cheap motel who didn't care what would happen if she stole my cash and car and left me in the morning. You don't wake up from something like that and just walk it off.

With everything that had happened Saturday, by the time Sunday rolled around, it was almost immediate that I found it to be a completely different day from the one before, beginning the minute my head hit the pillow Saturday night to the second I awoke the next morning, and continuing on until I went to sleep again that evening. But it didn't just stop with Sunday, no. I soon discovered that every day thereafter would be marginally different from the one preceding it. And, in my honest opinion, this was all Saturday's fault.

Let me give you an example of what brought me to this conclusion.

Between late Saturday night and early Sunday morning, I found myself unable to get to sleep. Usually, I'm out like a light, but when I tucked into bed at around 11:30 PM on Saturday, I ended up lying in bed staring at the ceiling for what felt like hours. It wasn't your typical case of insomnia, though. I couldn't sleep because I was thinking too much.

And I wasn't just thinking of any old thing.

I couldn't get that stupid girl off my mind.

Occasionally I would remind myself that this was borderline creepy, almost obsessive, and would resolve to go to sleep by curling into a ball and forcing my eyes shut. But when I did that, the image of her face would flash in my mind and I would snap my eyes open again, scrunching my brows in frustration as I struggled to remember who she was. Soon, there I was: sleeping on top of my bed sheets with my arms curled behind my head, just thinking, at three in the morning.

Sometimes I would shove the two of us into ridiculous and outlandish scenarios where I might have possibly known her once before. Scenarios where we're both ex-MIB agents or long-lost Siamese twins or she's my mother from the past. When my mind began treading into the plots of The Bourne Identity, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, or even Anastasia, I realized this was starting to get out of hand.

Somehow at some point, I even managed to drift off to sleep and dreamed about her face. I was at that state of consciousness where the line between reality and dream was a hazy blur, thus creating the illusion that I was still awake in bed when the dream took place. It was a really awkward dream, too: I dreamt that she was suddenly on top of me, her arms folded across my chest and her face all up in mine. I don't remember dream me minding either, which was the freakiest part. The traitorous bastard had our hands all over that girl's hair, petting it like it was made of clouds or something. She had star stickers all over her face and was smiling like the whole goddamn world was made of gardens and sunshine. She was also singing Katy Perry's "California Gurls" softly to me, as if it were a lullaby, and though I'd never spoken to the girl and thus had no idea what she sounded like, I just knew the voice drifting past her lips was wholly her own. 

How borderline homo this dream was ended up startling me awake with a yelp. My brain calmed down enough to grab my alarm clock and, after realizing I'd actually woken up about a whole ten minutes before my alarm was meant to go off, I decided I was too disturbed to go back to sleep and went ahead and started my day.

Unfortunately, that very peculiar morning was the only remotely interesting thing to happening during what felt like the longest goddamn day in the world. Let me tell you: Sunday was hell.

Which was weird, because nothing really happened on Sunday, save my weird dream. Nothing is usually my favorite brand of happenings, but it wasn't just that nothing was happening: it felt like something was actually missing. After waking up extra early, I ended up arriving to work ten minutes earlier than Yerim. I did everything she told me to do that day without question, and I was civil to most people who came in. I was acting so unlike myself that Yerim suggested I go home, to which I responded with the first Hyejooish thing of the day and told her to bite me. She allowed me to stay after that.

But nothing happened. Nothing I wanted to happen, anyway. I think that's what ruined my nothing of a Sunday: I was expecting something. It was kind of sad, I would later reflect, that during the normal course of my life, when I would love nothing more than to be left alone in complete solidarity and boring placidity, everyone and their mothers and Heejin's great-uncle find it absolutely necessary to invade my personal bubble. Then, of course, the one time I give a rat's ass and actually wait for something (or someone) to happen to me, I receive the nothingness I would prefer at any other occasion.

(I suppose Sunday wasn't entirely composed of nothing. "California Gurls" was so stuck in my head that I went from loathing it to actually liking it in the course of a few hours. I ended up going home that day, stealing the Katy Perry CD from my sister, importing it to my computer, and sticking the song on repeat on my music library until I fell asleep.)

There was no way to tell how much more eventful Monday could possibly be, but I decided to test-drive Sunday's change of pace to my morning routine and see if that made a difference.

So when my clock honked at me (my clock is a car, that's why it honks) at a new earlier time of 6:00 AM, instead of punching it to the floor, I sat up immediately, pressing the thing gently to sleep with my right hand as I rub at my eyes with my left. I yawned, stepping out of bed one leg at a time before dragging myself over to my cat sleeping on the floor. This is the only thing that doesn't change: I have to greet him every day. He wakes up when I do and gets legitly mad, scratching and wheeking all furiously at everything, if I don't at least acknowledge him. Monday morning he's surprised to see me up so early when I pour food into his food bowl.

"Morning, smelly," I mumbled, patting her head. He simply sat there, indifferent yet accepting, ever observing the world outside as it moved without him and not giving a damn either way. Him and I are very similar.

I took a long twenty-minute shower because I could, dressed quickly, found time to eat a bagel, and made it outside the door by 6:30. I arrived at the store at 6:40, five minutes sooner than normal (apparently I was walking faster, though I didn't notice). Yerim wasn't there when I arrived, and I didn't know what to do, so I sat out front staring expectantly into the horizon, waiting.

It hadn't occurred to me that my usual detest for mornings hadn't caught up with me yet.

Ten minutes later Yerim showed up, not walking, as I had supposed on Saturday, but being dropped off by her mom, which I had found out Sunday. It was a little ridiculous, considering she lives even closer to the store than I do... I didn't feel like bitching her out about this that day, though, no matter how sheepish she looked getting out of the car and approaching me.

"Ohh, you're early! ...Again. Are you sick?" I could tell she was trying to steer clear of the topic of her mom driving her to work. Honestly, she might as well have painted a huge target sign on her feelings because there were so many shots I could have easily taken at her at this point.

I didn't respond to my natural instincts to rip on her, though. I didn't want to respond at all. I didn't want to talk. I knew if I opened my mouth, the first thing I'd say would be something cruel, and then Yerim would get all butthurt and she'd cry and then she'd never unlock the door. I wanted to go inside. I wanted the workday to start already.

When I didn't say anything, she went ahead and opened the front door (I was awed; she was showing the remarkably high intelligence of a trained monkey that day), and we were in. My first task, apparently, was to go get the price tag gun and re-price certain items on a list she provided for me. Today, I decided to unquestioningly do what she said.

In about two and a half hours, I was done. Yerim was impressed, considering it probably would've taken me the same amount of time just to mop two aisles on a normal day. I also still hadn't said a word to her all day, which she appreciated immensely since it was considerably less painful for her ego. As a reward for me being what she defined as "nice" to her and getting my work done, she let me take a break. I almost didn't want to, finding it to be as patronizing as when she'd suggested I go home sick on Sunday, but she insisted that she actually needed to think of something else for me to do. So I relented, hiding in aisle 10 and starting a new cereal box maze.

At around 11:45, the bell above the door jingled with the sound of an entering patron. It made me weirdly excited, like it had every time someone walked in on Sunday, and I had to remind myself to keep my cool and walk over as I went to investigate (the first time I'd reacted to someone coming in on Sunday, I'd ended up running and skidding into a shelf). All the same, I couldn't help but wear my excited face; I could actually feel it plastered all over my face. The fact that the sound of a door opening had caused me to react this way made me realize just how much of a mindless worker drone I'd been for the past few two days, milling around, killing time, waiting. I'd probably felt more excited in those two days than I had my entire life.

The feeling I got when I saw that it was actually Kim Hyunjin coming in, however, was something akin to the emotion I might feel when someone punches me in the face. 

It was that terrible.

I stopped the minute I saw her, my excitement crumbling away and being swiftly replaced with a loathing-based nausea. Hyunjin saw me, too. She probably found my look of initial excitement as horrifying as I found her mere existence to be awful, because she averted her eyes even faster than I was able to, playing it off like she hadn't seen me at all. I was then thankful for the only aspect of her that is at all not detestable to me: the fact that she is not Heejin.

Spotting Yerim at the register, she ambled over to her quickly, as if thankful for the distraction.

"Hey, Yerim."

Yerim blinked, glancing over the top of her magazine. Her face broke into a grin when she noticed who was addressing her. "Hyunjin! Hi! What's up?"

(See, I don't get this about Yerim or Sooyoung. They actually enjoy hanging out with Hyunjin and Heejin. Half the reason I end up having to be surrounded by them is because my friends don't mind them and I have no one else to go to when I need people to chill with.)

"Yeah, um," Hyunjin continued, looking bashful and scratching the back of her head, "can you help me find...?" She hesitated, glancing sideways with an apparent blush on her face. She leaned forward into Yerim's now awaiting ear, cupping around it to whisper words that are too faint for me to hear.

I can only imagine what she would need to buy that would provoke such a stupid look and such precautionary measures.

Hyunjin looked glum. "It's for my mom."

Hyunjin punched Yerim in the arm (distinctively more jokingly and less painfully than I'm sure Yerim is used to from me). "Are you going to help me or not?"

Yerim snickers. "You can't ask...?"

I hadn't been watching them anymore, but when Yerim's question faded off like that, I knew for certain that she was jerking her head at me.

"No way!" Hyunjin hissed, and though her voice had dropped dramatically in volume, I could still clearly make out what she was saying. "She might bite me."

(I was aghast. If I were the biting type, I'd rather bite my tongue to the point of chopping it off than get my mouth anywhere near her.)

Yerim laughed, though, that asshole, not even trying to mask her voice so I wouldn't hear that or the next thing she said. "Right, right. She hasn't had her rabies shot either, so that would be doubly awful."

And they laughed and laughed and I pictured a land mine exploding beneath them both, and even though that would inevitably kill me too, the thought still helped me feel less angry.

"But seriously, though," Yerim continued after her laughter had subsided. "Hyejoo's cool! She's supposed to be nice to you in here. It's so awesome, it's like when you mess with those British guards with the funny hats and they just stand there taking it."

Hyunjin's face fell. "Please don't make me ask her."

"I'm right here, you know," I mumbled irritably.

Yerim could only offer an apologetic grin to Hyunjin. "Sorry. I'm on break." She waved Hyunjin off and returned to her magazine (People today, meaning I'd be getting my unwanted dose of celebrity gossip later).

Hyunjin sighed miserably, turning and walking over to me like she was about to go face the electric chair. She muttered a reluctant, "hey, Hyejoo," when she reached me, even as she stared at a wall and the ceiling and anywhere but my face.

"What do you want?"

She winced, but I felt no sympathy. We both knew this was going to be unpleasant.

"Uhh, I need, um, need some..." she began before her voice dropped out in a murmur. I didn't catch the last part of what she said, it coming out sounding like "trrmmpuhm", but based on everything that had transpired in the past few minutes, I could only assume what she wanted. "Could you help me find them?"

"I sure hope so." Before either of us could clarify what the other was referring to, I trudged off, Hyunjin trailing close behind me.

The feminine hygiene products were located at the very end of the last aisle and hidden deep in the darkest corner of the store. A light bulb had apparently gone out long before even Yerim started working here, and I think Mr. Johnson refused to fix it.

Since I wasn't the one buying this stuff, I had no problem personally seeking it out. Hyunjin, on the other hand, looked mortified. I suppose, had it been anyone other than me with her, she would have probably been less uncomfortable. The only thing making her so nervous at the moment, then, must have been the impending barrage of mockery that would ultimately result from the person she just so happened to be with. Even I had to admit that this was kind of a goldmine for jackasses like me.

However, as I lead her into her poorly lit corner of shame, I decided to let the girl off the hook for the sheer fact that she had managed not to piss me off. She thanked me very quietly, and I turned to leave, glad that this was all over.

And then...

"So, yeah, Heejin told me you were working here. That's pretty cool!"

I tried to remain calm, squeezing my eyes shut in exasperation. I guess that her attempt at polite conversation was supposed to be some form of gratitude toward me for both taking her to this aisle and not giving her hell about it. It just served to make things more awkward.

"Uh, yeah. It's great." I tried to leave again.

"She told me she invited you to my meet Saturday. You coming?"

I cringed, not at what Hyunjin had said, but the fact that she was still speaking to me. "I don't know."

"I'd really appreciate it. You can even sit with Heejin, Haseul, and Kahai. I'm sure they wouldn't mind hanging out with you."

"Sure."

I crossed a good three feet before Hyunjin suddenly said, "hold on, wait, can you lend me a hand? I don't think I can carry everything by myself," and I realized there was no escape from this madness.

Wondering how many pads one girl could possibly be buying, I turned and groaned loudly, seeing she was already holding about four large boxes and was reaching for another two more. Grudgingly, I dragged myself back over to her, opened up my arms, and accepted all four boxes of whatever she'd chosen as she attacked the shelf once again.

She kept talking to me, too, and I began to wonder if Hyunjin was really standing in front of me, or if it was Heejin in a Hyunjin suit, which I wouldn't have been at all surprised to know she owned. At one point my self-control gave out and I snapped, "Let's hurry this up, okay?"

She shut up immediately, going red in the face. She'd since been done with her selection so, pacified, I began walking ahead of her and rounding the corner toward the register.

That's when I saw it all happen.

The hand slipping into the box of Skittles by the register, that same hand stuffing a single package into a deep pocket, the girl looking as composed as ever while Yerim absentmindedly rung up her order. The transaction happened fast, and then she made her way over to the door.

It was that girl. The girl from Saturday. The girl I almost caught stealing. The girl whose familiar-as-all-hell face I just couldn't place to the point where it was all I thought about and apparently dreamed about. I briefly wondered why I hadn't noticed the door opening when she'd come in, but I chalked the fault of that to Hyunjin and her absurdly ardent need to talk to me.

As soon as I froze in my steps, I felt Hyunjin run into my back, unable to have stopped in time. She began to demand what was the holdup, but when saw where I had been staring, she suddenly shouted, "hey!"

The girl was standing at the door, one hand on the handle and the other on the plastic bag, when she heard Hyunjin and spun around. The two of us, she and I, saw each other at the same time, and I was so overwhelmed that I dropped everything I was holding.

The fear didn't flood into her instantly, like it did Saturday. Her face underwent a look that was equal parts surprise and...relief, as if she had been expecting me. I could tell that she remembered me from the other day, but just didn't know how to react.

I strode toward her then, deciding to be the first person to break this staring contest. I could only manage a word or two out of my mouth, though, something like "wait" or "can I just—?", before her brain seemed to turn back on and she remembered where she was and what she was doing and, more importantly, I suppose, whom I was. Realizing all this at once caused her to utter one of her weird little noises, and then, before I could react, she shoved on the door and left.

Automatically, I raced after her, reaching the door in time to watch her pedal away on a green bike.

"Goddammit!"

Remembering Yerim had rang her up, I sped back to the register.

"Yerim. Tell me you saw her face this time."

"Ahh, uh..." Yerim mumbled uneasily, not looking me in the eye. "I did..."

I was momentarily relieved. "And?"

"I don't really know her."

"...what?" I must have looked pretty scary when I said this, because Yerim actually backed up a full step, holding her hands up like I was going to throttle her.

"I've seen her at school a few times, but, I mean, I've never talked to her or had a class with her or anything! I have no idea what her name is!"

The more Yerim said things, the closer I was to breaking. My facial expression may have given this away, though, because she hastily spoke again, saying, "she mostly hangs out with Heejin and Hyunjin! O-or other people I don't really know. I've only started seeing her around since February!"

I turned, realigning my target.

"Hyunjin," I said calmly, thankful for once that she was here and felt like being chatty today. "You're friends with her?"

Hyunjin remained silent, momentarily surprised. I'd never approached her before with such a fevered look on my face (or approached her willingly at all anyway) so I suppose it was understandable that she'd be thrown off. "What? Her? Yeah, I am."

"Please tell me her name."

She frowned, trying to put things together in her brain from whatever she'd inferred from the situation. The fact that I was actually talking to her and encouraging her to talk back to me was curious enough. That I was being so uncharacteristically emotional, as well as highly concerned with this girl, also clearly bothered her.

"Why?" she finally said, eyeing me suspiciously. "What do you want with her?"

"I don't want to do anything to her!"

She mused a little more. "You can't tell me you've never seen her around at school before."

"Considering how hard I try to block out half the idiots there, no, I haven't."

Hyunjin continued to reason this all out, and I continued to hate her for that.

"Well didn't seem too thrilled to see you," she concluded decisively, ever the thoughtful son-of-a-bitch.

I stared, waiting to see where this was going.

"I don't know, Hyejoo. Maybe I'll just leave this between the two of you."

There was no language in the world that had the means to adequately express my frustration when I heard that. I couldn't believe it. The one time I wanted to talk to Hyunjin and she wasn't cooperating. It was like having the key to a locked treasure chest right in front of me, except the key was hidden in a box of used syringes. I groaned, grabbing my head in agony. There was no way she was going to let up, and I was way above groveling. It was hopeless.

Without another word (because I knew I was bound to say horrible, horrible things I could never take back), I returned to aisle 10 where I proceeded to rip open a box of Cinnamon Toast Crunch and start eating it. I heard Hyunjin retrieving her boxes from the ground, Yerim ringing her up, Hyunjin calling me psycho, Hyunjin exiting... all sorts of things that would have normally made me happy to hear, but just couldn't cut it this time.

The next few hours disappeared quickly, and soon it was eight again and work was over. As Yerim and I exited the empty store and I started to walk home, Yerim suddenly said to me, "Coffee ice cream," all bluntly like that, like I was supposed to understand.

I stopped a few feet away. "What?"

"That girl bought Coffee ice cream. Hopefully that'll help."

It didn't.

Well, actually, it did. It helped because it sounded very right in correlation to the girl, like it was unraveling a very important aspect of her. But it wasn't enough. It felt like wiping the dust off an old painting, but only being able to uncover an eye or a nose of the subject in the frame. Like an identity was on the tip of my tongue, but I was no more closer than that. What made this new information completely unhelpful was how not completely helpful it was. It was just painful.

Later that night I was in my kitchen forcing myself to eat cold leftover chow mein, all while staring intently at the wall opposite me as if willing it to catch fire. Minju and I had discussed the food situation on Saturday, and compromised that every night we'd trade off buying dinner and on the weekend I'd make pancakes or whatever frozen food we had. Yesterday she'd paid for a pizza. Today, with the ten I left behind, she had chosen Chinese. She'd already eaten a good half of it. I wasn't particularly hungry, so I guess it was okay.

At some point, Minju walked in. She picked up the carton of noodles I was eating out of and frowned at it before putting it back down.

"Didn't you at least warm this up first? What are you, stupid?"

When I didn't respond, she somehow she took it as an invitation to sit down.

"So how was your luck today?

I glanced at her apprehensively. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"How was your luck with that girl?"

"...what girl?"

She actually got so mad that she stood up and smacked me in the forehead. "The one from Saturday! God, what planet are you from?"

I was too amazed that she had remembered our conversation on Saturday to care that she had just hit me.

"I didn't get any news yesterday," she continued, "and you were acting like your lame boring robot self, so I assumed nothing happened. At least today you're showing emotions, albeit some shitty ones, so let's have it!"

It never occurred to me that I'd gone all of yesterday without having spoken to her. I wasn't sure what to make of that, so after a beat of silence, I did tell her. Everything. About how empty my Sunday felt and how stupid today was. I even told her about my weird dream. She listened very carefully.

The first thing she said when I was finished was, "that dream sounded weird as fuck."

"I'm aware."

Then she shrugged. "Well, weirdness aside, everything else sounds like progress, right?"

"Progress? She ran away. Again."

"Shut up, nobody likes a Negative Nancy. I'm sure she'll be back."

"What kind of thief returns to the scene of the crime?"

"She came back today, didn't she?" She had a point.

All the same, I groaned, massaging my temples. "This is so fucking dumb. I don't even know why I care so much."

"Look," she said, adopting a strangely serious tone. "I know first-hand from having lived with you my whole life that you are a boring, anti-social, anti-everything, —"

"Is there a point to this or are you just going to flatter me all day?"

"The point is that you're a loser who hates everyone! So, personally, from this standpoint, I think it's kind of nice that you give a crap about someone other than yourself for once. You must care for a reason; you just don't know it yet. So quit whining, you sound like a little bitch." She stood up. "Good night, ugly!" And she bounded off.

From that moment forward I decided not to go a single night without telling my sister about my day at work.

When Yerim realized Tuesday afternoon that working alongside me was a lot more fun than separating the two of us, she decided to give me an assignment that actually involved her as well: stocking aisle 7 with fruit juices. Originally it was a job just for me (like all the jobs are), but when I kept bringing boxes out from the backroom and lining the aisle with them, we both noticed it created something like a fort in the middle of the store. We actually stopped working for half an hour to play war with bags of marshmallows and cotton balls.

When we were done (Yerim won, by the way, but only because she decreed it so, as store manager), she decided to just help me finish what I was doing. She even offered to be the one to actually stock the shelves if I would be the one to go back and forth between the store and the stockroom lugging boxes. I didn't understand how much more strenuous my task was, however, until it was too late to complain about it (Yerim had constituted this point in time by quickly yelling, "no tag-backs!").

As I was in the middle of my job, carting a particularly heavy box of grape fruit juice liters back to the aisle, Yerim suddenly said, "someone walked in while you were back there. Check on them, will you?"

"What are you, the Grand Poobah? Why don't you go do it?" I demanded.

She sighed dramatically, the kind of sigh one uses when they're dealing with an idiot. "Oh, Hyejoo. So naive. The art of stocking the juice shelves is an ancient skill that is clearly much too complicated for a young padawan such as yourself to even begin to comprehend."

I rolled my eyes, flipping her off and walking away before she really got one of her long-winded delusional speeches underway. I wandered down the rows of aisles, glancing up and down everyone in an attempt to find the customer, until I was back in the produce section again.

Then, in an intense case of déjà vu that could have only been decreed by the grand scheme of the cosmos... I saw her. The girl, here again, and by the asparagus this time.

It was in that same moment that, as my brain struggled to stop reeling from the crippling shock, I also realized that the store was completely empty, save her, Yerim, and me. My stomach lurched. Was I seriously going to finally be allowed to talk to her without someone screwing it up for me? There was almost no way. I half expected a herd of cattle to come crashing through the store before that would be possible.

Her back was to me, so she hadn't noticed that I was watching her. It was also likely that she was too preoccupied to notice either, which I concluded when I observed her struggling furiously with a plastic bag between her fingers. It was a produce bag, the type that required one to rub the correct end of it between her fingers in order to open it. The girl was having a difficult time with her bag, rubbing it in all the wrong places and failing to get the right side open.

Seeing this as a golden opportunity, I strode over, coming up silently behind her, and stole the plastic from her clutches. She squeaked in surprise to see the thing disappear before her eyes, but didn't run away, not even when she turned to see me standing behind her (although seeing me did cause her to jump slightly). With a nervous stare, she watched as I turned the bag over, found the right end, rubbed it once between my index finger and thumb, and opened it with ease. I handed it back to her shaking hands and saw her gaze as it traveled from the now open bag she held, to my fingers, and finally to my face (but not my eyes).

"Hi," I finally said, not knowing what else to say.

"Uh," She spontaneously crumpled the bag between her hands, looking small and defenseless before me. I briefly noticed that this was the first time I'd ever heard her voice. It was so soft, not to mention high pitched. 

I fixed a firm watch on her, however, not allowing her peculiarity to distract me. "Glad to know our bags are working out for you today. I know how much you prefer your own clothing pockets."

"What do you mean?"

"Don't be stupid." I leaned in close, whispering now. "How'd the apple taste? Delicious?"

Her face was now littered with both confusion and terror.

"And those Skittles? I bet they taste better when they're free."

A shriek near leaped its way out between her lips, but she clamped her hands over her mouth, muffling it. "Are you suggesting I...," she spoke between her fingers, still twitching, "stole those things?" Even her own mention of the words seemed to freak her out and she made another frenzied series of weird noises. "Why would you think that? Do you know how much trouble I would get into if I stole something? My parents would ground me! I might go to jail! You know what happens to skinny blondes in the slammer!"

"How do I know you aren't faking that innocent act?" I retorted, though admittedly for all the absurdity that was lurking behind everything she had just said, it was all strangely believable.

She'd since removed her hands from her mouth and now clung to the hem of her dress. "You don't! But you don't know that I did anything, either, and I'm telling you, I didn't!"

She was right. There was no way I could prove she had stolen anything at this point. Without any evidence, I had no way of convicting her.

Then I eyed what she was wearing. The large sweater was missing, in its place a simple, light green dress with plaid patterning. It did however have pockets. 

"That's a nice dress," I began, still gazing at her. I walked around her in a half circle, keeping my eyes on her pocket's, until I was standing behind her again.

Before anything else could take place, my hands acted without my brain giving them permission began going inside her pockets, feeling for contents. There was definitely something in them.

"Oh my God! What are you doing? Get away from me!"

Yerim must have heard the kid's first cry of distress because she'd already been running toward the sound and had managed to reach us just as my hands were digging in her pockets. "Dude!" she exclaimed, grabbing me around the torso and pulling me off the girl. My hands flew out of the pockets, tightly clasped around whatever had been in them, and when I opened them before my eyes I found myself grasping...a cell phone and a set of house keys.

Crap. 

"What the hell is wrong with you?" the girl demanded as soon as I was out of her pockets and she was free. I tried to hand her back her things, spewing out sorry apologies, but she snatched them back angrily.

Yerim, too, tried to apologize for what I'd done, but the girl had already split, slamming out the front door, before she finished speaking.

Without warning, Yerim shoved me. "What's your problem? You've been acting seriously weird these past few days!"

When I didn't retaliate or say anything mean in response, Yerim looked immediately regretful for having pushed me, like she was afraid she'd broken me or something and now I wasn't working right. I had, instead, sighed and ran a hand up my forehead, through my hair.

"I don't know what came over me. I might have gotten out of control, but, dude, you don't even know; the mystery behind this girl is torture." I realized this made no sense as an explanation for what I had done, even as it was coming out of my mouth. But it was really hard to explain my motives when I was skirting around the topic of theft.

"Unless she's a flippin' spy or secret agent, it might be a little more friendly and less invasive of personal bubbles to, y'know, not put your hands in her pockets?" Yerim eyed me curiously. "It's hard to believe you're just trying to get a name or something from her. You better not be keeping anything from me." For a second there I believed she was onto me and I was going to have to tell her the truth. Then she added, "she's not really a spy, is she?" and I knew I had overestimated Yerim's observational skills.

We spent the rest of the day pretending nothing had ever happened.

When I arrived home later that night, I found Minju on the couch watching a movie. She shushed me as I tried to speak, but I didn't mind, considering she was watching my copy of 500 Days of Summer, which I occasionally hesitate to admit to my friends and acquaintances that I not only own but also quite irrevocably adore, if only because watching the main character live his life is like watching a more interesting and smiley version of myself.

I allowed the two of us to watch the movie for another twenty minutes before I muttered, "I talked to her today."

Minju immediately paused the movie and shut off the television, turning and giving me her full attention. We talked for about an hour and a half thereafter.

"Maybe you should try not starting off with the theft," she finally assessed after all the details of that afternoon's disaster.

"Sure, if she comes back."

"Yeah, you're right. You really fucked that one up." She stood up, then, and I knew my session with her was over. "But I have faith in you. Even if you apparently have as much expertise at talking to girls as you do talking to boys."

My sister's tactlessness aside, she had made a valid suggestion. The most threatening approach was clearly not working. I had it all in my brain to come at her from an alternate angle, but as I went my entire Wednesday morning the next day without running into her, I began to wonder if I would ever get the chance to implement my new plan of attack. As each hour passed, I lost a little more hope that she was planning on showing up that day, if ever again. By around 11:50 I had already long since turned into a mopping robot devoid of a will to be there.

"It's quiet in here," Yerim suddenly declared. Besides the absence of my mystery girl, there really hadn't been many other customers. It was quiet.

I glanced about at the ceiling. "I think those are speakers in the corners. Is there a way to play music?" I asked.

My question aroused an "Ah-Ha!" look on Yerim's face. She stuck her index finger in the air. "Oh! That must be what that thing is for!" She began digging around in her pocket, pulled out her MP3 player, and dove down behind the register. I heard her muttering and tinkering over there, then suddenly, over our heads, the sounds of pop music belted out and filled the store.

"Yay! Check it out, Hyejoo!"

I scrunched up my nose. "What is this?"

"Ke$ha!"

"Oh, no, I am not going to listen to this all morning."

"Aww," she pouted, "but I like it!"

"If you don't change the song, I'm going to go over there and break your Zune."

Before Yerim could protest ("Her name is Claudia and you will not touch her!"), the door slammed open, hitting the bell hanging above it so hard that the thing was flung off its hook and was sent screaming into the side of the register. Fortunately for me, based on the level of disgruntlement on the customer's face as she listened to our speakers, she didn't appreciate Yerim's taste in music, either. 

Ke$ha ended as I began to return to my abandoned mop in aisle 10, and... Justin Bieber came on after it.

I gave Yerim a look. "Really?"

She was already fidgeting with her device in an attempt to change the song. I told her I was coming over to her house after work that day to make a store-appropriate playlist and that she had absolutely no say on the matter.

Eventually, as I finished up my mopping in the same aisle, a song I didn't completely detest actually came on. It was that really popular Train song, one I actually kind of liked the first time I heard it. Then my sister blasted in on repeat in her room for a week, and after that I swore to punch a person for every time I so much as heard an inkling of its tune.

It'd been awhile since I last heard it, though, and all the same, it was still just as catchy as I found it the first time. Before I knew it I was bobbing my head along to the beat, humming to the tune, and whispering snatches of lyrics I could actually remember. I didn't normally do such things, but I guess it wasn't the most off I'd been all week.

When the chorus made its way around again and my singing started to get uncontrollably louder, I suddenly realized that I wasn't the only one singing. My voice gradually dropped out as I noticed this, and I distinctly heard it. I wasn't immediately sure of where it was coming from, but as I blinked at the wall separating the shelves of aisle ten from the shelves of aisle eleven, I deduced that the owner of the voice was hidden on the other side.

Deciding I had nothing better to do, I chose to investigate. 

When I peered around the corner, I saw that it was in fact not Yerim, but instead, to my utmost triumph, the blonde thief standing by a rack of batteries and studying them curiously. Not only was she standing there, but her lips were moving as well; she was still singing. She was even dancing a little, too. I suppose it was more of a rocking of her hips from side to side with the beat of the song, but she was definitely doing something.

It was kind of bizarrely captivating to watch and I continued to for a good five seconds before remembering that I wanted to talk to her and by some great will of God she had come back again today after our travesty of a meeting from yesterday. I shook my head to clear it of distractions, told myself to remember the game plan, and ambled over.

I walked up behind her just as she'd grabbed a small pack of triple A batteries, pulling them down and toward herself with the left hand clutching them. When I noted that she was wearing a hoodie, I immediately (and stupidly) assumed she was going for the pocket again and shot out my hand, grabbing her wrist before she could.

She spun around wildly in my grip, locking her surprised wide eyes with mine. That was when I noticed the basket she was holding in her other hand and how logical it would have been to also assume that that's where her left hand was really aiming for. In that same quick second, I'd noticed there was already a small tub of ice cream in the basket, and I wondered how I could have missed the thing in the first place.

The girl appeared too shocked to react as she normally would, staring at me like a dumb terrified rabbit. I felt hugely idiotic in that moment, and I hoped my facial expression conveyed that well enough. Normally, no matter what emotion I'm feeling, I perpetually wear a look of irritation; this was certainly not the best time for that.

"Sorry," I finally said.

Thankfully she hadn't screamed anything at me this time, but as she began shuffling his feet away, I realized she was trying to leave again. Fortunately I had forgot to let go of her wrist.

"Wait," I protested calmly, tugging her gently back toward me. She was about to shout again, I could tell, so I quickly slammed my other hand over her mouth to silence her. This freaked her out even more, but I wasn't too surprised. "Stop it! Calm down! I'm not going to do anything, I just want to talk."

A mix of emotions flashed in her eyes, and after a few seconds her panicking subsided and she stopped fidgeting.

My hand left her mouth, but I kept a hold on her wrist. She didn't scream when her lips were free, but continued to struggle to release herself from my hand.

"Stop! I'm not going to hurt you, dummy. I've been trying to talk to you for like, four days now, but you're always running away!" I balanced my empty hand on my hip. "Speaking of which, you know, for someone who's trying so hard to get away from me, you sure do spend a lot of time here."

"maybe I wouldn't run away if you didn't keep accusing me of STEALING!" She cried, pointing a finger in my face. I pushed it aside.

"Oh, God, that was one time."

"One time is one time too many! Let me go!"

I allowed her to wiggle around in my hand for a bit before I spoke. "I'll let you go if you promise not to leave."

"I don't make deals with terrorists."

"I'm not sure what that's supposed to mean, so I'm just going to let you go."

Surprisingly, she didn't leave. The first thing she did was rub her wrist where I had grabbed it, glaring at me beneath those long lashes of her's. I noted that there was a height difference of about six inches between us. That was kind of interesting.

"You're short."

"Is that what you wanted to talk to me about?"

"No." I paused. I had no idea where the hell my first comment had come from. Maybe I wanted an explanation. Maybe I was stalling so she wouldn't leave.

Suddenly I blurted, "what's your name?" with it coming out sounding more like a statement than a question.

I had forgotten to mention this, but she'd been twitching the entire time we'd been talking. She twitched everywhere, by the way, her hands, her eyes. It wasn't violent or spastic; more subtle, like a shiver coursing through her body, but noticeable if you payed attention. I failed to mention it, seeing as how it was so apart of her that it kind of went without saying.

However, right when I asked that, she suddenly went rigid, her twitching disappearing in a quick second all over her body. "Y-you really don't know?" There was a detectable trace of disappointment in her tone that she didn't try to hide and a curious absence of her odd noises.

"No," I admitted. "Should I, then? I do know you from somewhere?"

She continued to wear her defeat on her face, the twitching still missing "You...don't remember? ...Anything?"

I shrugged, shaking my head.

To my surprise, I watched as her brows furrowed in a frown, her lips getting pouty and her eyes flashing with animosity. "Figure it out yourself, Hyejoo," she spat bitterly. She shoved the pack of batteries into my stomach where I moved my hands to grab it, then stormed out of the building, slamming her way out as she did.

I hadn't even gotten a chance to react yet as I stood in shock of what just took place when I sensed a presence behind me.

"Jeez, what the hell's eating her?"

You're kidding me. 

Only Kahai could make an already terrible situation more terrible. As I had begun to say something to this effect, I remembered that she hung out with Heejin and Hyunjin and, most importantly, this girl.

"What's her name?"

Kahai sneered. "Ohh, I've heard all about this thing between you two, Hyejoo. Blondie over there told us she didn't want any of us telling you who she is. She paid a pretty hefty sum to get me not to talk. Question is: how much are you willing to pay, hmm?"

I flipped her off.

Later that night, long after I'd gotten home from Yerim's house to find my sister already asleep, and as I was crawling into bed, I realized the blonde never returned her ice cream, nor did I hear her pay for it. I was momentarily pissed until I also remembered that she'd referred to me by my name when I'd never told her it. I sighed, rolled over, and fell asleep.

My plans for the remaining two days in the workweek were a little more premeditated.

I had woken up early Thursday morning to sneak into my sister's room, assaulting her with stuffed toys and jumping on her bed until she woke up, just so I could fill her in on the details of the day before. Before she flipped me off, kicked me off her bed, and threw all her sharpest possessions at me until I finally left her room, she chided me for being an "insensitive clod" and advised that I not only not mention the theft but also not to come on strongly at all. Actually, what she really said was that, "it'd be great if you just didn't say anything and wore a bag over your head, but knowing you, you'd probably screw that up, too," but I knew what she really meant.

I don't know what kept me optimistic all day Thursday, but I was fortunate enough to have caught her walking up to the store that afternoon just in time to skid over to the frozen aisle when I did. I hid at the end of the aisle, waiting and peering around the corner for her to arrive. Just as I assumed, arrive she did, stopping at the doors housing the ice cream and opening one, peering in curiously.

I wandered over as innocently as I could (there may or may not have been a slight bounce in my step, since, after all, the bounce is the least threatening of all steps. I felt as stupid as I probably looked). As I intended, she was immediately alerted to my presence before I surprised her, and thus didn't freak out like she usually did. I knew she'd at least seen me out of the corner of her eye, anyway, because she suddenly looked both annoyed and anxious, all while avoiding looking directly at me.

Instead of walking right up to her, I halted at the door right next to her's. The freezer doors open to the left, so the one she had open was on her left at the time, leaving no barrier between the two of us. I opened the one I was standing in front of, though, and suddenly I was looking at her through a thick layer of glass and frost.

I knocked on the glass and she twitched in slight surprise before blinking over at me, her irritation being swiftly usurped by her newfound curiosity. I waved. Then, using that same hand, I placed my finger against the glass.

Hi, how are you? I wrote with my index finger. It took me awhile to do because I was writing backwards, but I had practiced writing backwards late the night before when I first thought of doing this, so it wasn't too difficult. I at least hoped it was legible.

She took a second to read the words, glancing at me briefly and warily before leaning forward to breathe on her side of the glass. In the condensation of her hot breath, she wrote out, Fine.

I found amusement in realizing that this was the first exchange of words we'd had where she hadn't shrieked at me. I imagined her writing her noises out in the glass, too, and couldn't help but smile at how freakishly cute that kind of sounded.

Awesome, I wrote back beneath my first line of words. I like your scarf. It was a black scarf. I didn't really know if I liked the scarf itself, but it looked decent enough when on her.

She read this, frowned, then tugged on the sleeves of her coat, staring at me. "What do you want?"

Your name. I wrote. I thought for a moment, and then added, I'm Hyejoo.

"I know who you are!" She said rudely, continuing to glare.

); I mimicked the face I had drawn behind the glass.

She made an angry noise (I hadn't heard that one before; it sounded almost like a normal person noise), turning back to her open freezer, searching about wildly for what I'm sure was her ice cream. Too bad for her, though, since I removed all of that this morning before she arrived, and hid them in a different area of the freezer, behind the frozen food.

From behind my back, I produced the single tub that I had saved. It took her a moment to notice it, but when she did, she glared at me and tried to grab at it. I pulled it back.

Training a very serious look on her, I blurted, "what if I told you I'd beat you up if you didn't tell me who you are?"

The reaction was hilarious.

"What!" she called out.

"Just kidding." I shoved the ice cream into her hand. I didn't usually have that much fun teasing people. Normally I was just trying to get rid of them. Funnily enough, it was quite the opposite with this girl. I was trying to test my boundaries, and I liked the way she reacted. It was peculiar, but quirky.

Unfortunately, now that she had the ice cream, she no longer had a reason to be here. And so, she left. And very bitterly, too. This time she paid for it.

Friday started out very much the same: the waiting by the door, the watching her approach, the running to the frozen section. I'd even hidden all the individual sized ice creams again, hoping that this time she would have to approach me if she wanted to find them. The only difference between this day and the last was that on Friday I had previously been mopping the condiments aisle, which was 5, when I'd had to drop my mop immediately and stride calmly to the frozen section (aisle 6) to station myself.

I stood there waiting for her, hearing the door opening, the bell jingling, Yerim greeting her, her nervous footsteps. It was all calculated, and I saw it unfolding perfectly in my head before any of it took place. In my head she arrives in aisle 6, her face smiling shyly when she sees me. She's doing the twitching thing, making her squeaky little noises, but she's not nervous, she's happy to see me, and she runs over, a twirl or two in there, and stops by my side, admitting how stupid and wrong she'd been in the past few days, telling me her name, and all our memories spill back into me. I remember that I'm actually a Russian princess that was split from my family during the Russian Revolution, and she is my servant, and she whisks me back to Russia where stupid people are considered illegal and everyone likes the movies I make, and it's glorious, glorious, end film, roll credits.

It would be a long time before I would realize how ridiculous that all sounded, more ridiculous than my typical daydreaming, but at the time I just didn't care. The only thing that stopped me from seeping into bad-sequel territory was that, as my ears followed the girl's approaching footsteps, I noticed they had stopped short and were coming from the wrong aisle. I moved forward, craning my neck to glance back into aisle 5, and there she was, poised between the ketchup and relish, standing on her toes to reach a jar of pickles that was too far above her for her royal shortness to reach.

After feeling slightly annoyed by the detour to my plans, I reasoned that this could work too. I started toward her, my brain already producing illusions of her spinning around to see me and accidentally blurting out, "my lord!" and my whole Russian princess identity rolling out of her like a red carpet. That's when, in the reflection of the light, I instantly noticed the thin puddle of water beneath her feet. I realized I had forgot to put up the "Caution: Wet Floor" sign before I'd abandoned my post.

This also worked.

"Hey, be careful, the floor is wet," I said, walking over and patting myself on the back internally for what a great opener of a conversation this could be.

I underestimated whom I was dealing with, though, because she didn't respond to my warning calmly, didn't thank me and handle the situation delicately, didn't fall to her feet and bow to me and announce that the tzar had returned. She became startled by the suddenness of my voice and shrieked, stumbling backward and out of the puddle. Her fingers loosened on the jar she'd finally retrieved and it started careening to the floor.

I don't know why I decided to be a hero at the time as I dashed forward, attempting to catch the falling pickles. In my head, though, the situation worked out quite well. I catch the damn thing like a fucking ninja, throw a dive roll in there, maybe a backflip. It'd be cool if something exploded too, and I whip on some shades, walk off into the sunset, roll credits. I'm also played by a pretty actor. That's how it went in my head though, which is the important part, since few things in my head ever comes to fruition. In reality, the moment I had my fingers around the jar was the same moment it connected with the floor. I didn't save it. On the contrary, it actually shattered, sending glass in a million directions, but most importantly into my hands. In addition, my sneakers skidded on the wet floor and I fell, scrapping my arm on a painful mixture of glass and pickle juice.

She screamed again as this was happening. I wanted to scream, too, out of pain, but I feared that this would frighten her more, and she already looked like she was a hair away from a freakin' heart attack, so I didn't. I just hissed and eased to my feet, struggling to drag myself away from the accident spot and tenderly clutching my aching arm.

Yerim finally appeared at the end of the aisle, looking worried and stunned. "What happened—whoah." She was staring at me, and in the kind of gentle tone of voice one would use in order to not provoke a nearby Grizzly bear, she said, "Hyejoo, You're bleeding," like I had no idea.

Meanwhile, blondie was having a panic attack, and I think the mention of my physical condition from Yerim made the whole thing worse. "Oh God, she's bleeding, oh my GOD! She's going to lose so much blood and...and...she'll die! She'll DIE! I killed you!— I killed you, crap!"

"I just need to get the glass out and wrap it up, spazz," I interjected quickly, interrupting her anxiety attack. "I'm not going to die."

"I don't know, that is a lot of blood."

"Yerim!" I snarled when the girl continued to freak out.

"First aid! I'll be back!" She ran off.

The girl was by my side almost immediately. "Oh God, uh, do you want to...d-do you need help?"

I didn't really, but if it got her to stick around, I'd act like a goddamn war victim. "Yeah, just sitting down. Can you help me to the register?"

She nodded frantically, swooping in to cling to my good arm and help guide me in that direction, and while my leg felt fine, I started limping anyway. Once I eased down into a sitting position with my back against the wall of the register, she flung herself down beside me, clutching my arm and beginning to extract the bigger shards with her own hands.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, oh Jesus there's so much blood! I'm sorry." She continued to mutter apologies over and over. I kept telling her it was okay, just an accident, tried calming her down, but she didn't ease up, so I stopped trying after awhile.

Yerim eventually showed up with the first aid kit, and the girl insisted on tending to me all by herself. Yerim thought that was great, and reminded me that I had to mop up aisle 5 when my wounds were bandaged up, before returning to her magazine. I flipped her off with my good hand.

The apologies from the girl had long since subsided as she became immersed in her self-appointed duty, but she continued whimpering to herself as she extracted smaller and smaller pieces of glass. Her face was near to my arm when she peered for shards, and she drew my hand close to herself when inspecting it. I could feel her shaking on every area where our skin connected, even her breath was shaky from where her mouth hovered over my hand, and I realized this is the closest we'd ever been.

"You know what would make me feel really good right now?" I said suddenly, milking the situation. "Since you busted a jar over my arm and everything?"

She bawled about a thousand apologies at that and I had to feign a groan of pain to get her to shut up as she scrambled around looking for antiseptic.

"What? What? I'll do anything!" Her eyes were big and remorseful.

I glanced at her smugly. "A name."

The look of innocence and regret wiped clean from her face as she instantly furrowed her brow and pursed her lips. She suddenly applied the antiseptic to my arm, hard, and I bit back a genuine groan of agony. "Anything but that."

"Dude, what the hell is your problem?" I demanded, getting mad now since my pain had just about doubled. "Why can't you just tell me?"

"Because it shouldn't be that simple!"

"Give me a break, my memory is shit!"

She jerked, mouth opening as if she had a particularly nasty retort for me, but she bit her lip instead, pouting and frowning like I had just personally offended her and she was being the better person by not responding. No matter how pissed I got at her, the pouty/lip-biting thing she was so fond of doing was like a goddamn kryptonite to me, one I had no way of standing a chance against, and as such it was a far superior thing for her to do than if she'd said anything at all.

It made me want that name more than ever.

At that same moment, the door to the store exploded open, startling all three of us (most importantly, though, it startled the girl, causing her to squeeze my arm and send a shock of pain shooting throughout my whole body, so that when she screamed, I screamed, but not for the same reason). Only Yerim was in a position to see who it was, but that hardly mattered when the customer let us all know who she was within seconds.

"Hey, where you at?"

It was Haseul.

The girl jumped in surprise again, likely because she knew she was being addressed.

I, meanwhile, could only clutch at my temples and groan. I felt like Ebenezer Scrooge, and every consecutive boy from the golden foursome was an increasingly more terrible ghost of Christmas.

It didn't take long for that poor bastard to find us, considering she could see Yerim, who was peering over counter down at me and the girl. I heard her wandering over and soon she was standing before us, ripped jeans and a sweater. Her hair was short, falling down to her shoulders.

"Hey you guys, what's going on?"

Then she really looked at us, or me to be specific, and her cheerful disposition faltered. "Who cut you?"

I pointed at the girl, who squeaked when I did. No matter how hilarious I found her reaction, I had to tell her I was just kidding, she didn't cut me, it was an accident, or else she wouldn't have kept blubbering about me dying and her going to jail and becoming some inmate's girlfriend.

"Wow, hun," Haseul whistled, still eyeing me, "you really did a number on Hyejoo."

"I didn't mean to!"

"I know you didn't." She nudged the girl's hand to ruffle her head "You wouldn't hurt anybody on purpose, although lord knows you can." She grinned at me. "I tried hugging this girl the same day she moved back here and she socked me so hard I thought I was going to be coughing up blood for weeks. Learned my lesson."

The girl clutched at her head again. "I told you it was an accident! You startled me!"

The two continued talking about this, that, and the other as the girl absentmindedly tended my wounds. I could only sit there and glare coldly at the familiarity between the two, feeling like an outsider looking into a microcosm of warmth and smiles with this girl that I couldn't fathom.

Finally, Haseul said, "I better get going. I was on my way home, but I saw your bike outside, dude, and wanted to say hi." She gave me a friendly nod. "And Hyejoo, stumpy, I didn't know you worked here! I'll have to stop by more often, we don't chill nearly enough." I failed to mention that the reason for this is because she's annoying, but I'm sure she was already plenty aware of that, since I usually said it every other time I was around her. She'd also taken to calling me Stumpy ever since she realized that I was just as exciting as a stump, and you imagine how well that sits with me.

"You'll be okay?" She continued, again addressing the girl, who nodded vigorously. "Cool beans. Oh, and did you want to walk with me to Hyunjin's thing tomorrow?" The girl nodded once more.

"You're going to that?" I asked the girl incredulously.

She turned to me, looking apprehensive. "Y-yeah."

"Are you, Hyejoo?" Haseul asked.

"No way, dude, Hyejoo hates that shit," Yerim added, grinning at me.

I know I said I didn't want to go and had once vowed to chop off my own legs before being caught dead at any of Hyunjin's sporting events, but this new piece of information changed things entirely. I didn't know how long these things usually lasted, but if she was there and I was there, that was at least another hour or two of opportunity to talk to her.

Before I could say anything further on this, though, Haseul suddenly interjected, "come on, Stumpy, you might as well. Even Chaewon here is going, and she never goes to anything."

I froze. The girl...Chaewon froze. Even Yerim froze.

"Haseul!" She cried angrily after a long silence.

"What?"

"Chaewon..." I said, testing the way it sounded coming out of me. It felt like I'd never forgotten it.

Haseul smacked herself in the forehead. "Right! You didn't want her to know! Shit, my bad!"

"So we're allowed to call you by your name now?" Yerim suddenly piped up. "I mean, since Haseul already did it and everything? Cuz let me tell you, dude, it was fucking hard not knowing if Hyejoo was going to hit me everyday if I didn't tell her."

I spun around so hard I think I pulled a muscle in my neck. "You knew?"

"She told me not to say anything!"

"You're a goddamn liar, Yerim, and when work is over I'm going to roll you down Phil Collins hill in a trashcan."

She winced painfully at the memory of the first time I did this (it was when I had asked her to watch my cat while I was on vacation and, even though it had lived, she told me she hadn't fed it). "I didn't lie completely, we still don't really know each other! I just had a better memory with the name that you did!"

I shook my head, putting my issues with Yerim on the backburner as I turned back to the girl.

"Chaewon. Your name is Chaewon," I mused contemplatively.

She sighed, glancing back at me warily. "yes..."

"No, no... , I remember that name! I remember you! I can't believe I forgot. I'm fucking hopeless."

Chaewon—God, I loved that she wasn't some stranger anymore—she lit up, hope flooding her eyes, her breath hitching. "You do?"

"Yeah. Yeah! I mean, with the anxiety and the ice cream, what the hell—You...we went to school together! In elementary, the same class. And then you moved away. That's why I didn't remember you, that was like a million years ago, man! Third grade, right?"

She stopped smiling. "It was fourth grade."

"Oh, well. Same thing, right?"

She was silent again.

"What's wrong?"

"what else do you remember?"

"Huh? I don't know... I think we had a fight in third grade. Something stupid and small?"

"Anything else?"

"Like what?"

"Anything!"

"I don't know! Is there something I should remember?"

After a pause, she suddenly shot up to her feet. "No, I guess not," she mumbled. Without looking at me, she turned around and quickly darted away. I heard the door's bell chime as Chaewon forced her way out, followed by the sound of her bike as she sped away.

The remaining minute of awkward was unbearable.

"What the hell...?" I finally said. "Is she constantly PMSing, or what?"

"Chae gets easily frustrated, but I've never seen her that mad," Haseul murmured, gazing quizzically at the door. "What'd you do to her, Stumpy?"

"Hell if I know. That little piece of crap won't give even me the time of the goddamn day so I can find out."

"Maybe you owe her money!" Yerim offered. I reminded her that I was still going to roll her downhill in a trashcan and she said more after that.

A few minutes later, Haseul finally left, telling Yerim she'd see her tomorrow and telling me that she better see me tomorrow, because apparently she "missed her little stumpy." It was a good thing Chaewon had left before she finished bandaging my arm, otherwise I might've hit Haseul for calling me that again. 

I finished up tending to myself (it took a long time because I had no idea what I was doing and the damaged hand was my dominant one), ended up cleaning the mess in aisle 5, and before long, it was eight again. As we parted ways outside, I told Yerim I was going to give her a rain check on her punishment at a time when she would least expect it (she demanded to know if I was planning it for the night of prom and I said nothing).

"Did you want a ride to Hyunjin's meet tomorrow, by the way?" She added before I was too far away to miss what she'd said.

"Who said I was going to that?"

"Well, are you?"

I didn't want to commit to an answer so I told her I'd think about it and call her later if I changed my mind.

My sister was standing eagerly by the front door when I got home. I would've hit her with the door accidentally if she hadn't stepped out of the way in time.

"How long were you...?" I asked, pointing at her and pointing at the door curiously.

"You come home at the same time every day, I just got up." For good measure, she added, "don't worry, you'll never be that special of a snowflake."

She watched me expectantly.

I sighed. "I got a name."

Then she did something extremely unlike her and squealed, clapping her hands and bouncing on the balls of her heels. It was like she'd won a goddamn award. "Congratulations! You're not as much of a failure as you've lived up to becoming!" She ran around behind me, suddenly pushing on my back and steering me into the kitchen. "Ice cream for dinner! Tell me everything!"

And when I did (tell her everything, I mean), she was so unbearably pleased that it made me feel like a winner.

Her final words to me were, "who cares if she got mad? This is exciting! You gotta keep at her!"

As I got into bed later, actually feeling pretty good, I noticed my cellphone sitting next to me on my bedside table. I hesitated a moment, then picked it up and sought out Yerim's number.

Get me at 10 exactly or that trashcan is going to be on fire, I texted her, then put the phone away, set my alarm for 9:30 AM, rolled over, and fell asleep.


	4. four

No matter how often the case occurred, I didn't usually enjoy sitting in the passenger seat whenever I rode in a car with Yerim. There were probably a million reasons why this was so, and you can take your pick off any one of them: she drives too goddamn fast, her seatbelts barely work, it's a pain in the ass to roll down the windows.

The most obvious reason, though, presented itself to me again when she'd pulled up to my house Saturday morning and I'd slid into the car, buckling my seat belt and glancing warily into the almost creepily cheerful smile she wore. At the time I was thinking, well so far so good, I guess.

This thought lasted no more than three seconds, though, because my brain suddenly registered the sounds blasting out of the car's speakers, and I vowed, on the spot, to never get my hopes up about this ever again.

"I thought this was done on Wednesday," I said, attempting to remain calm as I raised my voice a few notches over the sounds of autotune and pop beat. I couldn't even figure out whom the hell we were listening to today, that's how generic Yerim's brand of music is.

"Heh, sorry," Yerim replied, still grinning, "it's the radio! You can change the station, there's a bunch of presets!"

She didn't need to tell me twice, so I did as she advised, punching the numbers on the radio's dash until I realized that no matter which button I pressed, the song didn't change.

"Dude, these are all the same station!"

Yerim then cackled as if she'd been holding it in the whole time. "Exactly. My car, my music!"

Well of course I was not going to have any of that, so without hesitation I reached out to switch the station with the knob this time, but Yerim made a very bold move and slapped my hand away. When I reflexively punched her in the arm for that, the car lurched dangerously to the left as she lost control of the wheel and we almost crashed into a pole. I decided this was one of the few times where punching Yerim was not going to solve my problems.

It was rare moments like these where I sincerely wish I had acquired a license already. But I couldn't worry about that right now.

Hands gripping my knees in muted agony, I quickly mulled over some alternate options in my head: I could sit here and listen to this crap for all fifteen minutes it took to get to school, fight with Yerim over it and potentially get us into an accident (I could totally see her taking both hands off the wheel to wrestle over the controls with me), or I could cut my ears off. Each of these outcomes seemed to expel the same amount of energy and none of them sounded more appealing than the others (except perhaps the last one). Not completely happy with any of them, then, I spontaneously created a fourth option for myself: when the car finally came to rest at a traffic light, I unbuckled my seatbelt, tugged open my car door, slipped out of the vehicle, and began walking.

For all the sensitivity that I lack (and all the apathy that takes up that empty hole in my body), I think Yerim possesses more than enough for a normal person. It's like in whatever factory the two of us were made in, some assembly line worker failed to give me the ability To Give A Shit and had instead given my share to Yerim. Because, I'm not going to lie, if I was the one driving and Yerim had jumped out of the car like that because I wouldn't let her change the radio station, I would not only have kept driving, but I also would have slowed down to make it seem like I was letting her back in, then driven off as she tried to get back in the car.

But not Yerim. I probably walked for about a block and a half while she slowly crawled along beside me with her window rolled down, promising me various things if I would just get back in the car. She'd already long since guaranteed that I could change the station, but, while I didn't want to walk, really, the only reason I kept up for so long was because I wanted to see how many things I could get out of her for as long as I could. The second she promised to buy me lunch, dinner, and babysit my sister if I would just please get back in the car, I finally relented and slipped back inside.

We listened to the rock music station all the way to school. Yerim whined about it, ("I haaate rock! Just because your dad listens to it doesn't mean you have to like it, too!") but I threatened to get out of the car again if she didn't shut up. Honestly, it was bad enough I had had a hard time that morning just deciding whether I wanted to go through with all this in the first place, but Yerim didn't need to make the experience going there awkward and annoying, too.

9:30 had been alarmingly early (pun intended) for a girl with as terrible a memory as mine to wake up at on a Saturday morning when she didn't have to work that day. It was irritating, especially when I remembered why I was up that early in the first place (a sporting event? A school sporting event? A Kim Hyunjin school sporting event? What is this.) It had taken my sister literally rolling me out of bed to get me moving, but even after I'd showered and stood half-naked in front of my mirror, staring blankly at my reflection, I still couldn't believe I was going through with this.

Yerim had ended up showing up about forty-five minutes later than I'd expected her, which was just plain tormenting because it meant I got to spend more time rethinking my decision. I must have taken off and put on the same shirt about ten times, all while switching between reasoning, "this is stupid, you hate Hyunjin, don't go," and, "it'll only be a few hours. Chaewon will be there, that's why we're going, remember?" and "she doesn't even like you, dumbass," and "maybe showing up today will change her mind," and so forth, etcetera etcetera.

I was sitting quietly, not really listening to the station (which had made our argument pretty useless in the first place) attempting to convince myself that this was not the world's worst idea, when Yerim finally pulled up into the school's parking lot and came to a stop in a space that took us eight minutes to find. The minute the car shut off, she jumped out, screaming, "last one there is a rotten egg!" and ran off giggling like a weird little imp.

I calmly opened up the door, stepping out gingerly and strolling at a leisurely pace toward the school's football stadium, even as Yerim's wildly flailing figure got smaller and smaller as it sprinted away.

It was about ten minutes later before I reached the bleachers. Yerim's already up there, huffing and puffing, chatting it up with the people I hate most in the world yet had to spend the next hour or so socializing with. They're all sitting together, I observe, near the top but not too close to the top. It was still too high for me, anyway, considering their distance from the bottom forced me to walk by a slew of my classmates just to get to them. Now everyone would know I was here. I had a goddamn reputation as the resident school grump, the equivalent to a bridge troll you left alone because she's so pissy looking, and roaming around in broad daylight like this was certainly not helping me maintain that image.

I stomped forward and up the stairs, flipping off staring onlookers as I strode by them. The group I was aiming for was sitting in the order of Kahai, Haseul, Heejin, Chaewon, and then Yerim. Next to Yerim, to my greatest discomfort, were a bunch of other kids I knew: Kim Jung-Eun, Jung Jinsoul, Kim Jiwoo, and Im Yeojin. On Kahai's other side were Park Chaeyoung, Jennie Kim, Lalisa Manoban, and Kim Jisoo. I groaned. There were so many people and few that didn't annoy the crap out of me for whatever reason.

Yerim waved stupidly at me when she saw me, like we hadn't already just made eye contact. I rolled my eyes at her, excusing myself past Jungeun, Jiwoo, and Yeojin, as I tried to make my way over.

Straightening, I continued walking across, then Heejin, and finally stopped to the right of Chaewon, who was apparently pretending she couldn't see me, from what I could gather. No matter how hard she attempted to keep her eyes focused on the field, though, I knew she knew I was there. There was no way to not see me, and she was being extra fidgety and nervous.

I sighed, rolling my eyes and maneuvering past her.

"Move over, Yerim," I muttered to her.

She stared at me quizzically, probably wondering why I needed to sit there of all places when there was plenty of room elsewhere. When she didn't move right away, I simply sat down in the inch of space between her and Chaewon, causing her to quickly jerk to the side to avoid being squashed.

When I plopped myself down between the two, Chaewon on my right and Yerim on my left, I found myself snuggly brushed up against both of them. Once this contact was made, I immediately felt the shoulder to my right go starkly rigid. I smirked.

As nice and comfortable as I was, when I turned to stare at Chaewon, I watched her face struggle to maintain some minimum of composure. There was no hiding how anxious she was being, though; she was nervous as hell. I'd yet to wrap my head around how weird she was around me. 

I leaned in close.

"Hello—" I started before taking a deep breath and finishing with, "—Chaewon," drawling and dragging out her name in a tone of pure triumph, loving the ability I now had to finally be able to address her by name.

"Shut up!" 

I casually leaned back into the bench behind ours. "Chill out, you're going to give yourself a heart attack." 

"Well, she was doing just fine until you got here," Yerim mumbled beside me. I gave her a look, like this conversation clearly wasn't meant to contain her.

"Do I get a hello?" I continued, glancing at Chaewon again.

"Shut it, Hyejoo!" Kahai bellowed four people away. "This is hard enough for me to follow without you talking over it." 

I would've flipped her off, but Chaewon had been making small nods while she was bitching me out, and I knew when to take a hint. I followed everyone's gaze to the field, then, and attempted to maintain some level of interest. Then I realized had no idea what the hell was going on. There were people running around the track and people throwing things and people jumping over things and I couldn't tell who anyone was or who the announcers were talking about or if anyone was actually winning.

Of course, my mind was gone within the first five minutes or so. I was kind of glad that Yerim had been late picking me up this morning, then, since it cut out about an hour of bullshitting my way through giving a crap about this stupid "sport". I don't know how long I could've lasted if I was expected to sit all the way through the allotted time this thing was supposed to go on for.

I yawned loudly and felt Chaewon jerk against me again, as if she'd managed to forget I was sitting there and had been startled.

"'scuse me," I said, loud enough for her to hear me but quiet enough so that no one else could. With my eyes on the field, I leaned over to her again, muttering, "so, how are you?"

She stiffened again but said nothing. When I nudged her with my shoulder to prompt her to speak, she—I kid you not—squeaked, hands rushing to her mouth to stifle the sound.

"Dude, loosen up." I didn't mean that. Her noises were growing on me, and this new one just took the cake. I don't know why I was reacting this way to her, but something about it felt natural, so I didn't fight it. "My hand is fine, by the way, in case you were wondering."

And for God's sake, she made that little squeak again, and I found myself clutching at the bench as if to control myself from who knows what. She was cute but I couldn't... like her. She did something that was far more distracting, though, when she suddenly grabbed my injured hand and peered at it closely. "Who bandaged this?"

"I did. You left remember?"

She did remember, but unfortunately with that memory came the reason for why she'd left, and she let go of my hand instantly, letting it fall back into my lap. "Sorry," she muttered curtly, turning back to the field.

"It's cool. I didn't lose too much blood, and, hey, I got what I wanted from you anyway, right?" I teased through a mildly amused smile.

Chaewon suddenly shot up out of her seat.

"I-I'll be back," she mumbled, glancing at everyone to her right when she said it. She stepped over our bench to the space behind it, then began walking toward the stairs.

I waited for someone to say something or at least acknowledge this, but no one else had seemed to care or at least notice that Chaewon had said anything at all, let alone left, besides me. When I remembered that I'd come to this stupid thing because of her in the first place and that she'd now left me with a group of people I very much had no interest in being alone with (except for Yerim, though she was guffawing it up with Jinsoul at the moment), I leaped up after her.

"Where are you going?"

Chaewon froze halfway to the stairs and spun around to see that I was following her. "The bathroom! I said I'd be right back!"

"I'll come with you."

"What? No! I don't need you to...to escort me to the bathroom."

I couldn't help but smile at this. It was just such a ridiculous comment, but not in the annoying sort of way. More the funny sort of way. "I'm not 'escorting' you, loser," I responded, taking care to imitate her voice when quoting her. "I need to go, too."

Chaewon, now looking significantly more annoyed than nervous, exhaled angrily through her nose, muttering, "Fine," before turning around and continuing to walk off.

Certainly not deterred by any of her obvious irritation, I followed.

Chaewon was walking quickly ahead of me, and you'd have to be an idiot not to see that she was obviously attempting to lose me. My eyes are trained on her, though, so I was able to catch her when she made a very deliberate turn away from the Porta Potties and steered herself in the direction of the school itself.

"Hey, Chaewon," I called to her, even though she was a good yard away. "The school is closed. There are, like, outhouses or whatever over there—"

To my surprise, however, the moment she reached the school's entrance she suddenly produced a ring of keys from virtually nowhere. Within seconds she had the door open and was pushing her way inside. I increased my pace to a jog and quickly caught up to her, pushing against the door even as it began to close against me.

I opened it to find her facing the entryway, watching it expectantly, and when she saw that I had managed to cross the threshold behind her, she uttered a disgruntled huff. The bathroom was right there by the door, so she moved to go unlock that, too.

"Dude," I said, watching her. "Why do you have keys to the school?"

" I'm friends with a janitor," she mumbled offhandedly, like that was nothing, whatever. "I promised I'd have it back to him when I'm done."

I didn't believe her.

"And you can't use the outside toilets?"

"No way!" she exclaimed once she got the door unlocked. "How do I know who was using it before me? Does anyone clean them? All that junk just...sitting in there? Where does it all go? It's bad enough I have to use a public bathroom, I don't wanna use one of those."

Not wanting to hear another freak-out lecture for the follow-up questions I could have easily asked, I gladly accepted her answer, sighing and pushing her into the bathroom before following behind her.

Chaewon turned on the light, and then, for a long moment, the two of us just stood there. I wasn't sure why she wasn't doing anything, and for that matter, I wasn't sure why I wasn't doing anything, either.

"...Did you want help or something?" I offered suddenly.

"God, no!"

"Then why the hell are you just standing there?"

"I...I have to pee!"

"So take your piss!"

"I can't!"

"Why not?"

She avoided eye contact as a faint shade of red colored her face. "N-not with...you standing there!"

Realization hit me and I was flabbergasted. "Are you fucking kidding me? It's not like I'm going in the stall with you."

She looked half-insulted by that. "I know that!"

"So what's wrong with me?" I was shouting then, though I didn't realize it at the time. It was interesting, since I never raise my voice.

I wasn't prepared, though, when the next word out of her mouth was, "everything!"

I was quiet after that. It wasn't that I was offended, honestly; I was just a little stunned by her frankness and unsure of how to react to it. After some silent deliberation, I figured she didn't actually mean what it sounded like she'd said. Because, well, no one's that much of a tactless asshole...except me, of course.

"Let me guess," I tried again. "It's weird because you don't know me that well?" Which actually still didn't make much sense to me, because that would mean thats she basically was uncomfortable peeing anywhere outside of her own home. And unless she was on familiar terms with the entire school population, there was a very small chance that she would ever make it to the bathroom at the same time as all her friends.

A very curious look flashed in Chaewon's eyes for a split second, not long enough for me to analyze it, before she nodded crazily. And despite how nonsensical my explanation was, I chose not to push the issue any further. I didn't want to force her to be uncomfortable, after all. I know I'm weird about showing it but I care about her. 

"I could wait outside until you're done!" she offered. "Then we could trade?"

"No, no, that's stupid."

"Fine! I'll just.. wait until you get out." 

I strode past her to the handicap stall, locking the door behind me.

After I unzipped my pants, I commenced doing my business, the echo of my peeing filling the entire empty bathroom so it sounded like a thousand people were taking a piss at the same time.

"So...uh, Chaewon," I started to say. I figured this moment was already plenty awkward, so saying this right now couldn't possibly make it any worse. "We should hang out some time. Y'know. Cuz. You seem kinda cool." I was wrong. It sounded a thousand times more awkward than it had seemed in my head.

I finished my peeing and the entire bathroom was still. I waited a moment, not receiving a response.

"What, don't like talking in the bathroom, either? That too weird for you?"

More silence.

"Look, Chae, you can say no, too, like if you hate me or something. I'm kind of getting those vibes."

I expected her to scream something ridiculous again at this point, but when nothing happened, I actually began to get worried. I wouldn't have put it past the girl to have found a way to knock herself unconscious while peeing.

I quickly zipped up my pants, pushing through the stall door and assuming to see her on the other side.

She wasn't there.

She wasn't in any of the stalls either. 

I almost—almost—ran out of the bathroom without washing my hands, but I did, don't worry. But as soon as I was done, I was out of there, goddammit.

Can I just mention for a second how downright creepy it is to be alone in a high school for second? And I'm talking completely empty; I'd been here on weekends for Saturday school and shit like that, but that's not the same because there's other kids here and the teachers are here and the janitor is here and all that. This wasn't like that, especially since the damn place was locked before we'd come in here. I mean, I know I wasn't completely alone since Chaewon was here somewhere, but she wasn't in my immediate line of sight so it wasn't anywhere near the same.

It was creepy. Even in broad daylight. All the lights are off so the hallways are dark and they look extra long and almost undisturbed. The typical hustle and bustle I was used to on a normal basis is gone, replaced by an eerie silence that's almost palpable. I began walking past classrooms, staring into the windows and seeing no one there, like everyone just simultaneously disappeared out of thin air. It was like an apocalypse had occurred.

Like a zombie apocalypse.

And then it was a zombie apocalypse. Suddenly the walls were molded and crumbling, the air was dank and smelled putrid. Besides the undeniable silence, there persisted a queer ringing somewhere untraceable. I stepped over bits of dirt and debris and the occasional dry bloodstain, and every step I took reverberated throughout the halls, sounding louder than normal. I held my breath, expecting an unholy army of the undead to round the corner, dragging half-severed ankles and reaching out for me with decaying fingers and grim expressions that tell me they're only after one thing. And then they did come, they were coming right at me, and I had yet to pick up a shotgun so I about-faced and ran down a different hallway and thought, please let there be a dead cop in here somewhere.

For the record, it only played out this way in my head because that's how zombie movies tend to work; there's always some idiot running around who's unarmed and doesn't have a clue what she's doing. I should know; zombie movies are my favorite, and my dream is to have my breakout hit be a zombie movie. However, rest assured that if I really were in a zombie apocalypse, I would have been prepared. I've read the survival guidebook. Actually, Yerim made me read the guidebook since I know there never will be a zombie apocalypse so it didn't really matter to me whether I read it or not, but I'm ready all the same.

It was a good thing I changed my hallways, though, because in a few minutes I found Chaewon again. She was standing in front of a row of lockers, running her fingers across different dials, contemplating each one with an intense concentration. She's not shaking, I noticed. She's also a zombie. There was crusted blood all over her skin and her clothes were tattered and she was missing half of her arm. 

Not really, of course, but when my imagination is on a roll, it's on a roll, so I walked over to her, ignoring anything that had to do with her and the lockers, and declared, "oh, God, Chaewon, they got you too, oh shit." I would like to note that were she really a zombie I would never have said this, because that would be stupid and ridiculous and the type of thing that gets you bitten, killed, and undead.

The sudden sound of my voice caused her to jump about three hundred feet in the air, give or take a few feet, and her shriek bounced up and down the hallway a few times so that it returned to us even before she was done shrieking it. "What? Who? Who's got me?"

"The zombies, Chae."

If she looked terrified before, she looked goddamn near petrified at this point. "Zombies? Oh my God, where?"

"Everywhere, dude, it's the freakin' apocalypse. They're all over the school and they got you."

She frantically ran her hands all across her body. "They did? I didn't even notice! Oh my god, they got me! I have to run away! No, you have to get away from me! I might bite you! Oh god, you might have to shoot me! Don't shoot me, Hyejoo."

This girl was amazing. I wanted to hang out with her forever. "You don't have anything to live for. You're dead."

"I'm dead?"

"Dude, you're a zombie, of course you're dead. But it's okay. I won't shoot you. And I won't run away." I held out my arm. "Bite me."

"Why? You'll turn into a zombie!"

"That's okay. This way you won't have to be alone and then I won't have to run around fearing for my life. I bet we could take on the entire damn world and turn everyone to zombies without dying once. Besides, I've always wanted to be a zombie."

She wanted to protest, I could feel it coming, but I knew that she was also mulling over how flippin' awesome my idea sounded. "Er, okay," she said finally, putting on what I supposed was her brave face (similar to my excited one, it looked like she never used it very often) and it was quite possibly one of the cutest damn things I'd ever seen on another girl, just because she looked like she was trying so hard. I was almost not bothered by how cute I was finding another girl to be, that's how cute it was. Puppy-cute.

I held my arm up again and she stared at it tentatively for a moment, very seriously. Then she leaned forward, glanced apologetically at me for one last second, then clutched my hand and my elbow, her mouth hesitating over my wrist. My breath hitched in my throat, and I forgot that we were playing pretend here. This was way too close than I was used to, way too close than I was expecting, but this unpredictable girl was keeping me from pulling away. I was curious to see how far she was going to go with this. So I watched her, and she moved closer, her breath ghosting over my arm. She wrapped her lips gently around my wrist, I felt the warmth and wet of her mouth, and then she bit down on my skin...hard.

"FUCK!" I bellowed, jerking my arm out of her mouth and waving it around like an idiot.

"I'm sorry! I figured the virus was supposed to go into your bloodstream to make it quicker, so I was trying to draw blood—"

I held up a hand to stop her from talking. The pain had since subsided, though her teeth marks were still present on my skin. "No, it's okay. Chae, you're way too good at this game, you really had me going."

"Oh my god..."

"Yeah, zombies. I don't really play games, I'm a grown person, but I mean, it was just pretend, right? That was some pretty sweet acting."

"There aren't any zombies?" She looks even more horrified at this than when I told her that there were zombies.

"Yeah... Wait, you thought this was for real?"

She nodded furiously, looking slightly annoyed, and then I couldn't help it at this point. I had to laugh. I just had to, you don't understand. I doubled over on myself and cackled, my shoulders heaving and my lungs giving up, just laughing.

"Fuck you! You don't have to be an ass about it, you lying jerk!" And then she socked me in the arm and it hurt like a motherfucker so I finally stopped my insane laughter, although a giggle or two still escaped me as I tried to talk again.

"N-no, sorry," I said, my words coming out in a chuckle as I wiped tears from my eyes. "I'm not making fun of you... Actually, yes I am, but not maliciously. Chae, I come over here pretending there are zombies in the goddamn school and you believe me? Not only do believe me, but you bite me? Like for real? That's just...that's too fucking precious." And that's the truth. I thought that was ridiculously adorable. Her freak-outs were quirky enough, but this was just downright entertaining.

I pointed at her as she continued to fume. "You, my friend, are a keeper."

"Ugh, whatever. You're an asshole."

I wish I could say I was done with the teasing thing because she obviously did not appreciate it, but then she started doing that pouty thing I like so much, and it really did not help her cause. It had the same effect on me that babies have on normal people, where you just want to coo and babble nonsensical shit at it. I hate babies and have never undergone this desire to turn into a bumbling moron at their very cuteness, but with Chaewon's pouty face I had to actually bite my lip to resist that primal urge babies typically elicit. She was just so mad.

When I finally got myself under control, I said, "aw c'mon, don't be like that. I was just kidding. Just for fun. I really did think it was cute. Trust me, this asshole thing grows on you, just ask Yerim."

She paused. Then, with an intense level of coldness, she muttered, "we're not friends."

"I know that. I know we're not friends." There was that look in her eyes again, and I couldn't make sense of it, so I kept going. "But I'd like to be. Really." I took a step toward her and she took one back. "Even if you don't."

Her pouty face fell and she looked at me with an emotion I couldn't place.

"You know, if this was a zombie apocalypse," I continued, "I'd still let you bite me. I'd still be zombies with you. And I'd let you bite all the living people you wanted and I'd never let anyone shoot you and you wouldn't have to be afraid of anything ever again."

Except I didn't really say those things, because I would never say those things. That isn't me. That's weird and gooey and reeks of Yerim and it freaks me out, so I kept it inside, I kept it in the part of my brain that processed my imaginations, and instead I said, "what were you doing here by the lockers anyway?" so I never got to find out what would have become of the two of us if I'd said what I'd wanted to say.

"Nothing," she replied.

"I doubt it."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Oh, not much, I just think it's interesting that you, with the track record you so proudly possess, opened a locked school with the pretence of using the bathroom, only to not use the bathroom and instead ended up over here twisting locker locks." I didn't know why I was saying those things. I guess I felt like if I kept talking about anything, those weird thoughts of mine wouldn't pop up anymore.

"I did use the bathroom! Not my fault you can't hear anyone but yourself!" Something told me she was talking about more than just the sound of my peeing.

She suddenly shoved past me, stomping toward the exit. I followed her.

"Why are you so grouchy?" I found it ironic that I of all people would ask such a thing of someone else.

"Since when do you care?" she shouted over her shoulder.

"Uh, duh, I've totally cared about you this entire damn time, in case you haven't noticed!" My mouth slammed shut instantly, knowing exactly what that sounded like.

Chaewon spun around then, her face alight and her eyes burning. "No, you never care. About anything. Least of all about me. You're just curious, because I'm this weird twitchy kid that steals shit, am I right? Am I interesting Hyejoo? Am I adorable? Wanna make a movie about me? Just this quirky little stranger you wanna play pretend with? You think you know me so well, but you can't remember a damn thing about me. That how much you care?"

When she said those things, I realized Park Chaewon knew more about me than I knew about her, more things than I would ever let on to a person I'd just met, and I actually become embarrassed. There is no doubt about it: we had a history. I could no longer ignore that.

She'd turned and left, pushing out the door long before I was able to react again. I thought I had had plenty of time to run after her, but then I remembered she had to lock the door to the school, and I wouldn't have put it past her to lock me in there. I charged out after her, only to find the key ring hanging on the door with the correct key stuck in the lock and Chaewon darting farther and farther away.

That was...smart, actually.

As I turned to lock the school, she got far ahead of me. She was already ducking underneath the bleachers by the time I managed to run after and catch up to her.

I grabbed the back of her shirt to get her attention, and she spun around, glaring defiantly at me.

"Look, I get your beef with me," I said, glancing sideways. "There's...there's something between us, right?"

She stared at me for a long moment, calculating my sincerity, then nodded, albeit a bit reluctantly.

"Well, then I'm..." I bit back the word before letting it tumble out of me, "I'm sorry. I'm sorry that I can't remember what it is, this thing we have. My memory sucks. And it's been about, what, eight years since we last spoke? You need to give me a break, because I'm not doing this on purpose or anything, and I don't want to keep treating you like a stranger, because I get how that must feel. So a hint, a beginning. Kick me off. What are we?"

She glanced at the ground. "We are...we were friends."

"Best friends?" I asked. I would have been pissed if my best friend had forgotten about me. I thought about Yerim and Sooyoung and just the thought that they would forget me makes me want to find them and beat them up (except Sooyoung was more likely to kick my ass).

"No. Just friends." She emphasized a specific word in her statement, and that look flashed in her eyes again.

"In the fourth grade."

"Well, in third grade, too, but yes."

"And you moved out of town in the fourth grade. You moved because..." I thought, long and hard. "Your parents." It was actually a guess, but I said it confidently.

"My dad. My dad had to move because of work. He sells—"

"Coffee."

She was surprised that I said this. "Y-yes. My dad sells coffee."

"I remember...you used to drink coffee a lot." 

"Yeah, that was me. I still do drink it, but I tried doing other things. Ice cream is good. The coffee makes me jittery, makes me...makes me paranoid. It's like drugs. It doesn't help me."

"It's just coffee."

" It's not just what's in the coffee! It's the addiction. It's any addiction. I'm susceptible to them a-and..." she paused. "Why am I telling you this?"

"Because we're friends."

"We were friends." And that was all I got out of her before she remembered that she was annoyed and stormed off again.

I reached the bleachers again moments later, and this time Chaewon was sitting between Haseul and Heejin. I didn't want to sit next to either Haseul or Heejin to get nearer to her. Perhaps she was worth the torture that would have been, but I figured I better give her space, so I sat back down next to Yerim.

"Dude, where were you? Did you fall in? You were gone with Chaewon for like thirty minutes."

"There were zombies in the school."

"Shit, seriously?" Yerim exclaimed, and for some reason it wasn't as cute when she believed me. Maybe because it was Yerim and she believes me because she's dumb like that.

"Yeah, you dumbass, seriously."

"Good thing I let you read the survival guidebook!" She turned to high-five Jung Jinsoul next to her, who'd been listening to us the entire time, because that girl is a huge nerd and would read things like that. "We should totally have a zombie movie marathon again! Jinsoul hasn't seen Fido yet!"

Jinsoul shrugged. "It looks stupid."

"You look stupid, dumby," Yerim retorted, and in that silly way that told you know she was trying to be funny. "Can you believe her, Hyejoo?"

"I don't know, Yerim, you look stupid too."

Jinsoul laughed and Yerim pouted (also not quite as cute) and I ignored them both as Yerim plotted out another zombie movie night (which I inwardly was totally down for, since I can never get enough of Romero or watching Zombieland one hundred times).

I was forced to sit there and stare at the field again, and it still looked like the same shit was going on since before I left half an hour ago. I supposed that didn't really matter, though, since I was barely paying attention. I was thinking about Chaewon and our conversation, and, with a bizarre feeling rolling around in the pit of my stomach, I thought about when were playing zombie apocalypse, and it made me grin like an idiot.

My mind was so far gone that I didn't even notice when the whole event ended, (except I knew that even if I were paying attention, I wouldn't have been able to tell if it was over or not anyway). My only indication that it had in fact ended consisted of everyone around me suddenly talking loudly and getting up at the same time, and I hoped this wasn't like a half-time thing or something and that we were actually leaving.

"Oh, thank God, I don't know how much more I could've taken of that," Kahai said loudly, much to my delight.

"You didn't have to come!" Heejin retorted, which was predictable. They fell to their typical bickering, and I let it fade into the background.

I followed Heejin out of our bleacher and down the stairs, and when we reached level ground again, I walked over to join Yerim (and Jinsoul, I guess, whose presence made me miss Sooyoung, who was still on vacation in Hawaii). The three of us immersed ourselves in the group that was Kim Jung-Eun, Yeojin, Jiwoo, and some other girls, following the group that was Heejin, Haseul, Kahai, and Chaewon. I kept my eyes on the small frame that trailed in the back, gauging the way she reacted to things, interacted with her surroundings, how she simply existed.

"You are a stalker, if I ever saw one," a voice said beside me, and I glanced over. It was Jinsoul. Yerim was busy rambling off to Jiwoo about the zombie marathon still; apparently she had a date and everything planned, based on what I was hearing.

"Oh? You know a thing or two about stalking, Jinsoul?" I shot back steadily and without hesitation.

I didn't really talk to this girl that much. Yerim adores her and tries to keep bringing her along when it's usually just Sooyoung, her, and myself, but it's awkward in the same way that it's awkward when a girl brings her boyfriend around. We all have to change our group dynamics around this girl, so none of us are really act like ourselves. Anyway, besides that, I never interact with her, but I liked to keep tabs on the way most people react to me being a jerkass, and I wasn't particularly surprised to discover that she was your classic "I don't know how to deal with this so I'm just going accept looking stupid and stay quiet" type.

"My point," Jinsoul continued, avoiding my comment, "is that if you're trying to be friends with Chaewon, you should probably try talking to her and getting to know her better instead of just staring at her like she's a piece of meat. You don't make friends with meat."

"What do you think I've been doing? It's not like she wants to be—" I paused. "How do you know I want to be friends with her?"

Jinsoul accidentally shot Yerim a glance, and I realized these two were better friends than I had originally assumed.

"Well...next time Yerim wants to publicize my problems that I thought were mutually understood to be confidential, you tell her that Hyejoo has a bench and some duct tape with her name on it. She'll know what I'm talking about."

Jinsoul stopped talking to me after that, which was just as well. If I needed a shrink for my issues with dealing with other people, I'd go to my sister. Or Sooyoung. (speaking of which, did I mention that I miss her? She needed to be home already).

Hyunjin eventually found us and everyone was either giving her high fives or bumping fists and saying loud happy things to her. Especially Heejin who didn't hesitate to hug her, I was surprised that the two of them weren't dating at this point. 

I didn't remember or probably couldn't have told if she won, uh, whatever it is she does anyway, so I wasn't sure what to say when she walked over to me.

I took a wild stab at it, though, and tried, "Congratulations, Hyunjin!" and hoped she didn't actually lose.

"Thanks, Hyejoo!" Whew. Though it would have been funny if I'd just congratulated her for losing. "Glad you came! You too, Chaewon, what's the occasion, you two?"

We exchanged a glance but neither the two of us answer.

It doesn't matter, though, because Heejin suddenly bursts into the conversation, holding Hyunjin's waist from behind. "Hey, guys, so the four of us drove here together, but we're taking Hyunjin now, so there's not enough room in the car for all of us."

"Doesn't your car fit five people?" I pointed out.

"What? No, Anyway, the point is that I need to dump someone on whoever else is driving."

Yerim, obviously, was one of the drivers, and being the sociable girl she is, she piped up immediately. "Ooh! I have a car! And room! It was just me and Hyejoo!"

"Can I get a ride too?" Jinsoul said quietly.

"Me, Hyejoo, and Jinsoul!"

Yerim is more than enough noise and annoying for one car, I didn't need her nerdy BFF and anyone from Heejin's car to make it worse.

"I can ride with them," Haseul said suddenly, zipping forward from virtually nowhere. She strode forward, and as soon as her hands were free, she instantly grabbed one of mine and laced our fingers. I sent a revolted look of pure hatred in her direction. She also mumbled something that sounded distinctly like, "hey Stumpy," and I wanted to die.

Of course, she'd be the obvious choice. Heejin was driving, Hyunjin was going with Heejin, Kahai wasn't on good terms with me, so that just left her. This hand-holding girl who acted like a mother to everyone she knew. We held hands once, once goddammit, on a field trip in the fourth grade, when it's completely acceptable for a straight girl to hold another straight girl's hand. Someone brought it up again later in the seventh grade, when it wasn't acceptable for a straight girl to hold another straight girl's hand, and ever since Haseul learned that this memory irritated the crap out of me, she decided to do it as often and annoyingly as possible. It felt like every consecutive time she did this, I was growing less and less fond of having hands in the first place.

"Haseul! You can't leave me with them!" Kahai protested.

Haseul mumbled something cheerfully, pointing at me. I don't know anymore, I wasn't listening. 

"I don't care if you're holding hands with Hyejoo! Get over here!"

"Get off me," I whined, clawing at her fingers. For someone as petite as Haseul, I was impressed by the iron grip she had on me.

Haseul only giggled besides me. 

That's when I realized Heejin's car could only fit four people, which was why they were getting rid of one, so that meant that the fifth member of their group was...Chaewon. Which made sense, I'd reflect later, since I remembered that yesterday Haseul had offered to take her with them to this thing, and I don't know why it never originally occurred to me. I glanced over at Chaewon and she was hardly paying attention, instead playing with her fingers.

Haseul followed my eyes, saw Chaewon, and blinked curiously. She pointed at her. "Hmm?"

"Yeah, Chae, you go with them! It'll be fun." Kahai chimed. 

Chaewon shook her head viciously.

"No way! I don't want to ride with her!" And she looked right at me when she said this.

It was like a sharp sword going through my gut, and I was torn between my normal instinct to not care and this newfound urge to want to bash someone's head in. I hoped to god that no one saw the briefest flash of emotion that surely crossed my face.

This entire ordeal was pretty pointless, though, because a few seconds later Jiwoo rushed forward to offer Hyunjin a ride in her car. There was some weird miscommunication and Kahai and her get into a fight and somehow, by the end of it, she ended up in her car, leaving Hyunjin, Heejin, Haseul, and Chaewon to be an adequate number. Everyone was okay with this arrangement for some reason, so they all began to disperse in the general direction of their respective cars.

Haseul instantly released my hand as she started to walk away. "Too bad for you, Stumpy," she said snidely, smirking at me.

"Yeah, 'cuz I really wanted to be stuck in a car with you for fifteen minutes."

"Whatever, you think I'm awesome," she retorted, grinning still. "But I was actually referring to..." She threw a glance at Chaewon.

I snorted. "Noooo, I don't get to ride in a car with a girl that hates me, woe is me. You're really on to me, aren't you?"

"No, but you want to be on her." I wanted to kill her. "Hey, I'm just kidding, lighten up!"

But I was still seething, even after she walks away to join her friends.

Ten minutes later, I was in the backseat of Yerim's car. The only reason I ended up back there was because Jinsoul instantly declared, "shot gun!" the minute we hit the parking lot, and Yerim probably would've made her sit there anyway because after Jinsoul said that, she responded, "sweet! Hyejoo loses stereo control!" and they high-fived. We were already about a minute and a half into our third Ariana Grande song (with both persons in the front singing along at the top of their lungs), and I wanted to drive a drill through my head.

"I miss Sooyoung," I mumbled, staring out the window. That's when I noticed that we'd missed the turn that took us to the residential area of town completely, and we were heading to the opposite side of where we live. "Uh, where are we going?"

"You didn't hear?" Yerim yelled over the music. "Hyunjin's team is celebrating at Chuck E' Cheese!"

I almost didn't believe her until I saw the huge sign in the distance and Yerim turn on her signal light to get into the parking lot. "...What? You people still go to this shitty place? Aren't you a little too old—"

"Hey," Yerim declared, spinning around in her seat to give me a stern look. "There is nothing shitty about free pizza, okay?"

"Actually," Jinsoul suddenly added, and I'd forgotten she was in the car with us. "It's not free exactly, we all still have to pitch in like three bucks."

Yerim and I fell silent.

"It's just a three dollars, guys, that's not so bad..."

"...I miss Sooyoung," Yerim said, and I nodded sagely in agreement. If Sooyoung were here, she would have been more than happy to shower her fabulous wealth upon her destitute best friends. Sooyoung could probably buy this place if she wanted to. To her, three dollars was absolutely nothing. 

Yerim and I ended up talking and reminiscing about Sooyoung for another three minutes as if she'd died, and we probably would have kept talking about her if Jinsoul, who was left out of the conversation, hadn't actually got out of the car and walked to the entrance. The sound of the door slamming snapped us back to reality.

Hyunjin's whole team was already there, taking up two of the biggest damn tables in the restaurant. Along with them was the group of people that Kahai had traveled with and the other people that had been sitting with us at the event and yet another huge group of people from my class that I didn't remember seeing at the meet itself. I didn't realize this event had been that important, and I don't think I'd ever been around such a large group of people, like, ever. No wonder I never came to these things.

I slid into the empty space on the bench, next to Yerim, who tried talking to me. For once, I didn't mean to be rude and not respond, but all the noise and lights and people here was too much for me. I sat in silence and the food that had appeared right in front of me, my eyes roaming over the fifty or so people that were with us. As if trained to find her, my eyes found Chaewon instantly, way on the other end of the table, sandwiched between Haseul and Jungeun. I watched her carefully. She was eating her pizza, albeit anxiously like any second it might come to life and kill her. It was sausage. Meat.

You don't make friends with meat. That's what Jinsoul said.

About thirty minutes later, everyone was pretty much done eating and had dispersed to the arcade games. We had to pay for our own tokens, too, so I didn't even bother at this point (though the word "token" made me think of Sooyoung and I thought about the avalanche of tokens that Sooyoung would have gladly bought for me, and I was a little sad).

I stood idly by the skee ball, watching everyone walk by, and then I found Chaewon again. She had been with Haseul last I saw her, but now she was by herself by the change machine, waiting for her tokens to come out. I moved, striding over to her.

"Let's talk," I declared, putting my hand out and grabbing all the gold coins as they fell from the machine and locking them in my fist.

She stared at me like a stern parent, and placed her hand out so I can give her the tokens.

"I want to talk. How are we going to be friends if we don't talk?"

"I don't want to talk! We're supposed to play games here!"

"Alright, let's play a game."

She makes an angry little noise. "You're not just trying to steal my tokens, are you?"

"Oh, no, I'm not the one who does the stealing around here," ...is what I wanted to say, because it was pretty perfect and she just about walked into that one. But I didn't want to be a complete asshole to this girl.

Instead, I said, "just one game together. What do you want to play?" I glanced over across the way. There was one of those arcade games that you can sit in like a booth, with the curtains and the darkened glass. Usually it's the Jurassic Park game, but I saw that it was House of the Dead, and I nodded at it. "Zombies."

She didn't get a chance to respond when she turned to look at it because I grabbed her elbow and steered her over there, much to her half-hearted protests. I whipped open the curtain and saw Yerim and Jinsoul already in there, both with guns in their hands and shooting away at the screen to the sounds of dying zombies.

"Yerim.. can we please play." 

"Dude, we're in the middle of a game!" Yerim pouted, gesturing at the screen as if I couldn't see it.

I reached out and stole her gun, pointing it at the screen and wasting all her bullets on the floor as a zombie clawed at her character's face. Yerim was on her last life, so she was dead now. Jinsoul was much better at the game, though, so she still had all three lives and managed to kill every zombie in front of her without getting hurt. I waited for her to die, which surprisingly didn't take too long. 

"Look, you both died." I was already moving as if to sit on Yerim, so she scooted over, shoving Jinsoul along as she does. The two of them scrambled to get out of the booth, glaring at me and saying mean things, but when I dragged Chaewon into the booth with me, I tugged on the curtain and shut out their stupid faces.

I handed her all her tokens, taking care to keep two for myself. She reluctantly accepted them, removing two like I did before she shoved the rest in her pocket. "One game with you," she said.

"One game. Then we talk."

We stuck our coins into the machine at the same time, and the game started.

Chaewon was already screaming ridiculously when we saw the first zombie, and she didn't stop after that. She had a new thing to say for each one that popped out, like, "GO BACK TO THE HELL YOU CAME FROM!" and each word out of her mouth sounded more ludicrous than the last. I had to turn and bury my head in my arm in the corner of my side of the booth so she didn't see the stupid grin on my face. Every time I wanted to laugh, I had to bite my tongue hard, and it hurt like a bitch.

She ran out of two lives before we'd hardly dented the game.

"I don't want to play this anymore! I'm almost dead!"

"Okay." I put down my gun and I ended up losing a life.

"No!" Chaewon protested. "Don't waste my fucking tokens! You can still play!"

"Fine." I kept playing, just like she wanted, but I wasn't really looking at the screen. I was facing her. "Let's talk, then, since you don't want to play."

"Watch the screen!"

"It's cool." I shot about five zombies without taking my eyes off her. I knew how many I'd shot because the screen reflected in her big, stupid, pretty eyes. "I play shooters like it's my job. What's your favorite color?"

She squeaked as a zombie got dangerously close to me, but I shot at it, still watching her. "Yellow."

"Yellow?" I shot a barrel and its explosion disintegrated four zombies. "I like blue."

"Ahh, uhh—" I'd reached the boss and fear flooded her face. "Wait, just...watch the screen first!"

"If you're so worried about me, you could play, too."

"What? No, dude, I died a long time ago!"

"No, you didn't"

She looked again and, sure enough, her character's last life was still displayed on the screen. "H-how...?"

"I told you: like it's my job." It's true. Sometimes I would go to arcades to play this game by myself, but pay for two players, just so I could use both guns or one gun to protect two players.

I hand her the gun again. "No need to thank me."

I said I would protect you. But I hadn't, I remembered, not out loud anyway, so I kept that inside, too.

We played for a good seven minutes or so. Chaewon came close to dying about five times, but I saved her each time. She eventually did die, though, but only because she let herself. She sat back, watching me, and I realized this was no fun without her, so I let myself die, too.

"You could have beat it!" she said.

"I've already beaten this whole game. First pet."

"Uhh...I had a parrot once. His name was...Turtle."

I smiled. "I have a cat—"

"Named Stripe, I know! Look, what are you trying to do?"

I was almost surprised that she knew that, but then I remembered that we knew each other once before and that me forgetting that was what made this a problem in the first place. That's why I was here.

I sighed.

"Chaewon, I'm sorry that you thought I was making fun of you today at school. And I was, I'm not going to lie, but that's just 'cuz I make fun of everyone..." I paused. "But that's not the point! The point is that...when you acted like you were a zombie when I told you you were one...I liked that. Because...because I make up weird shit like that all the time. You don't even know. And usually when I do it, people think I'm weird, that I spend too much time imagining stuff and not enough time doing stuff. But you...you didn't. You believed me. You could see exactly what I was trying to say. I feel like...you see things the same way I do.

"I don't remember you right now. I can't change that. But I want to be your friend. And I want to remember you. So if I get to know you now, brand new, maybe things will come back to me. And I promise you: I won't forget a goddamn thing this time."

Chaewon was silent then, and I couldn't tell what her facial expression was because the screen had gone dark in the booth.

"So," I said, breaking the quiet (or as much quiet as there could be while the game continued to moan and scream in front of us). "Favorite movie."

She didn't respond right away, and I think it was because she knew that this is the million-dollar question for me. "...what's your favorite movie, Hyejoo?"

I was surprised she didn't have an answer prepared for this one. "I couldn't tell you my favorite," I admitted. "Don't really have one."

"I remember you like movies."

I was glad she did. I really was.

"I do. I really like zombie movies," I gestured to the game screen. "I like indie stuff. And I like your typical movies, The Godfather, Kill Bill, Lord of the Rings... I really like the Indiana Jones series, too, except for that last one. Lucas is a goddamn sellout."

Usually I went off on this rant when Yerim and Sooyoung were around, and they hated it. I was expecting as much from Chaewon.

But no.

"I completely agree! I mean, what he did to Empire Strikes Back should be illegal."

I stopped. "...you hated his re-release of Empire Strikes Back?"

"Yes! it sucked!" 

While sounding bold in her statement, her facial expression said otherwise, as if I was going to judge her. 

I could have said a million things at this moment, but all I managed to get out was, "...I hated it, too."

Her eyes lit up, as if she's relieved I wasn't going to yell at her or anything. "Yeah? It sucked, didn't it?"

"Yeah, it did," I murmured, not thinking about what we're talking about anymore.

Whatever is hanging in the air about the two of us shatters like glass when Haseul suddenly ducked her head into the booth. "There you are!" She spotted me. "Oh, hey Stumpy. What were you two up to?" Her tone of voice and what it suggests does not settle well with me.

"What do you want?"

"Huh? Oh, right." She turned to Chaewon. "Chae, we're leaving, you comin'?"

The girl jumped, but nodded.

"Hey, where'd you get money to pay for this game?" Haseul said suddenly. "Stumpy pay for you?"

"What?" I said. "No, she paid for herself. Me, too."

"Chae! you fucking liar," Haseul said, grinning at Chaewon. "Little asshole, you told me you didn't have any money. You even showed me your empty wallet."

"I'm not a liar!"

"Then where'd the tokens come from, buddy? They fall from the sky?"

That's when I realized I'd never actually seen her put money into the token machine. There was no way she...

"Jiwoo leant me a dollar," Chaewon said quickly and quietly. She glanced at me, grabbed my hand, and placed her fist inside it. "See you around, Hyejoo." She opened up her hand and I felt her tokens slip into my palm. She stepped out of the booth and followed Haseul. 

Judging by the amount of tokens now sitting in my hand, what Chaewon had was worth way more than one dollar.

But I didn't care.

That night I went to sleep and had a dream that I was on a pirate ship, standing at the steering wheel, turning it and turning the ship. There are zombies on board, hundreds of them. Chaewon is there, too, standing by my side, and we're both armed with swords, fighting off zombie after zombie. They fall into the ocean, which is a strangely white in color. It's a sea of milk, I realized, and floating all around us are giant pieces of Captain Crunch cereal, and our ship is in the bottom of a bowl. When a tide hits and our boat careens over, I grab Chaewon and hug her to me, and we die together, zombies and milk and cereal and all.

It jostled me awake at 3:30 in the morning, where I was hugging my comforter like its very life depended on me. I sat up quickly, my cheeks on fire and my stomach turning, and I buried face in my hands, but when my eyes shut, the first thing I saw was her face, flashing at me with every emotion she'd thrown at me that day, and a few more my brain decided to make up. I released my head, and ran a finger across my wrist, where I could still feel the place where she bit me, and I sighed shakily and uneasily, that feeling rolling around in my gut again.

Emotionless. Like a rock. Like a robot. That's what they called me.

Do you ever smile, Hyejoo? 

Do you cry? 

Do you laugh? 

Do you ever feel anything but nothing? 

That's what they demanded of me.

Let everyone know this now: I wasn't at all like the first group, and I most certainly could answer yes to the second.

...I think I was in infatuated with Chaewon.


End file.
